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THE PROCESSES OF HISTORY 



The Processes of History 

FREDERICK J. TEGGART 

^Associate 'Professor of History in the 

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 




NEW HAVEN 
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

MDCCCCXVIII 



Copyright, 191 8 
By Yale University Press 



First published, April, 191 8 



MAY 27 1918 



©CI.A497722 



PREFACE 

The question "Is History a science?" has now 
been debated by successive generations of histo- 
rians without any general agreement having been 
reached. It would seem, therefore, that in some 
particular the problem had been wrongly stated. 
Hence, following the critique presented in my 
Prolegomena to History, I have approached the 
whole matter from a new angle by asking what 
sort of results might be obtained by a strict appli- 
cation of the method of science to the facts of his- 
tory. The outcome of this procedure, stated in 
general terms, is an attempt to do for human his- 
tory what biologists are engaged in doing for the 
history of the forms of life, and this publication 
offers in summary form a first analysis of the fac- 
tors and processes manifested in the history of 
man. 

For the sake of clearness, and in order that the 
essential considerations might be brought within 
a brief comprehensive view, the argument has 
been condensed and made as explicit as circum- 
stances would permit. Since footnotes and cita- 

[v] 



PREFACE 



tions of authorities have also been eliminated in 
the interest of brevity and directness, it should 
be understood that there is no view expressed 
which, I believe, is not already familiar to stu- 
dents in one or another branch of humanistic in- 
quiry. So far as I am aware, all that is new in the 
present contribution is the co-ordination into one 
consistent statement of results which are well 
known, but which are widely scattered through- 
out the literature of anthropology, history, po- 
litical science, philology, education, geography, 
and other studies. Further than this, the most 
significant feature of the book is an insistence 
that, in dealing with a problem of this magni- 
tude, the prime requisite must be an exacting 
care in regard to the method employed. Hence, 
it seems to me, that the questions for immediate 
consideration are : first, whether the problems of 
method have been correctly stated ; and, second, 
whether the factors and processes indicated are 
correctly described. 

More generally, there is no disguising the fact 
that the present world-situation is imperative in 
forcing men to question searchingly the validity 
of their own activities. Are, then, those of us who 
are engaged in the study of History doing all that 

[vi] 



PREFACE 



lies within our power to make our inquiries con- 
tributory to the well-being of our fellow-men? 
We must admit that while, during the last fifty 
years, the students of Nature have most signifi- 
cantly enlarged the knowledge of the world in 
which we live, the students of Man have made 
no such striking advance in their field of investi- 
tion. It is true that we have been persistent in the 
collection of facts, and in the refinement of the 
technique of investigation, but it would seem as 
if the utilization of all this accumulated knowl- 
edge in the spirit of modern science might now 
be undertaken. What, then, is presented here is a 
tentative statement, based upon the application 
of the method of science to the facts of History, 
made in the earnest belief that inquiry conducted 
along the lines marked out must ultimately lead 
to an understanding of the difficulties that beset 
our civilization, and to a furtherance of the wel- 
fare of mankind. 



[vii] 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Nature and Scope of the In- 
quiry ..... i 

II. The Geographical Factor in His- 
tory . . . . .41 

III. The Human Factor in History . 79 

IV. Method and Results . . .124 



[ix] 



THE NATURE AND SCOPE OF THE 
INQUIRY 

i. Science is, fundamentally, a method of deal- 
ing with problems, and the initial step in any 
scientific undertaking is the determination of the 
problem to be investigated. 

A survey of the present situation, in which men 
everywhere find themselves involved on one or 
the other side of a world-conflict, stimulates in- 
terest in the wide differences that exist between 
the many and various groups into which man- 
kind is broken up. Thus, in the foreground, we 
are vividly conscious of differing characteristics 
when we speak of French, Belgians, and Italians, 
Germans, Austrians, and Magyars; and impres- 
sions associate themselves with the thought of 
Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders 
which are not suggested by mention of English, 
Scotch, and Irish. But the present conflict is not 
restricted to inheritors of a western European 
tradition, and the sense of difference becomes 

CO 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
more acute when we turn to think of the eastern 
participants. Few of us have any extended first- 
hand knowledge of Russians, Rumanians, and 
Serbs, of Turks and Bulgarians, but even the 
daily recurrence of these names fails to remove 
the feeling that attaches to them of remoteness 
and unfamiliarity. Yet further off, in Asia, 
peoples of a wholly un-European aspect are 
bearing arms in the same cause — Japanese, 
Chinese, Annamese; Sikhs, Rajputs, Afghans; 
Arabs, Kurds, Armenians ; Buddhists, Brahman- 
ists, Mohammedans. In what terms, indeed, do 
we think of the men who hold the Khyber Pass, 
of those who actually oppose each other when 
Turks and Russians meet in Persia, of those who 
carry on a European war in equatorial Africa? 
At best we comprehend vaguely that similarity 
of military equipment does not at once bring all 
these various races to the similitude of English- 
men or Germans. But behind the combatants, as 
it were, stand other peoples, now in the turmoil 
forgotten: tribes of furthest Siberia, unsubdued 
aboriginals of interior China, forest denizens of 
India, desert dwellers of Australia, peoples 
whose names are to us but as technical terms 
of anthropological specialists, peoples whose 

[2] 



THE NATURE AND SCOPE 

strange implements we gather into museums, and 
whose uncouth ways provide materials, in every 
generation, for travellers' tales. 
There are differences enough and to spare, and, 
at times, when the subject is brought forward, 
we recollect that in appearance, practices, and 
beliefs the men who people the earth are of the 
most heterogeneous description ; but, ordinarily, 
we dismiss the fact, or entertain it momentarily 
as contributory to our self-esteem. These others, 
indeed, even though our comrades in arms, are 
'different,' are 'backward,' are 'colored,' while 
we (whoever we may be) are 'civilized' and 
'progressive.' With such indefinite phrases we 
escape the sense of a problem, and shield our- 
selves from the embarrassment of the direct ques- 
tion: "In what respect are these others different 
from ourselves?" So we are able to ignore the 
fact that even the 'white' race is not without its 
lowly members; and our complacence is un- 
shaken either by observation of our own byways 
or by recognizing that such primitive groups as 
the Ainus of Japan, Maotzi of China, Todas of 
India, Veddas of Ceylon, and even the much- 
discussed aborigines of Australia have been 
classified as "Caucasian." Furthermore, though 

[3] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

the knowledge is a commonplace, we tend, in 
forming judgments of our contemporaries, to 
forget that, not many generations back, our own 
progenitors fought with crude weapons, wore 
skins, and painted their bodies. We tend, for ex- 
ample, to forget that even in the eighteenth cen- 
tury the civilization of China was regarded by 
European travellers as superior to their own. 
We ignore the consideration that our religion 
was derived from a land we now regard as 'back- 
ward,' and the fundamentals of our thought from 
a people whose present representatives we are 
disposed to patronize. 
Nevertheless, the conflict has already had the 
result of lessening the exclusiveness and self- 
confidence of the western European, and has 
induced in him an awakening appreciation of 
the manhood and common human quality of out- 
lying peoples. In truth, a new current of feeling 
has made itself felt, and we come to regard the 
differences and contrasts among men, not as a 
basis for disparagement, but as something to be 
explained. And here we may discern the nature 
of the problem with which we are confronted. 
Every human group, white, black, or yellow, en- 
tertains precisely the same attitude of superiority 

[4] 



THE NATURE AND SCOPE 

towards all the others, and the vindication of this 
attitude in ourselves requires that we, for the 
sake of all, should endeavor to determine, not the 
reason for our own superiority, but how man 
everywhere has come to be as he is, 

2. The problem so stated is not new, and many 
theories have been advanced to account for the 
manifest differences in human groups. Of these 
theories, the most popular and persistent is that 
which attributes the diversities among peoples to 
physical differences in race. Thus it is widely 
believed that difference of race implies a real 
and deep-rooted distinction in physical, mental, 
and moral qualities, and that the contrasts in the 
achievements of the various peoples are due to 
differences in physical characteristics. Hence it 
is thought that one race becomes a master because 
of its physique, courage, brain-power, and mo- 
rale, while another sinks in the struggle or lags 
behind owing to its inferiority in these qualities. 
This view naturally implies that the same race 
preserves its character, not only in every region 
of the world, but in every period of history, and 
so the course of history would appear as a sus- 
tained process of selection between the races that 
are sluggish, cowardly, and retrogressive, and 

[ 5 ] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
those that are energetic, brave, and progressive- 
while the latter press forward, the former die out 
or stagnate in lazy passivity. A slightly different 
turn is given to the explanation by those who 
maintain that the present savage races are those 
which have been left impoverished and station- 
ary as a result of the migration of their more 
vigorous or stronger elements; the younger and 
more alert in each generation, it is thought, go 
out to seek new homes, and leave the older and 
more conservative to perpetuate the original 
group. 

While the explanation in terms of race has been 
supported, in recent discussions, by an appeal to 
biology, there can be little doubt that its princi- 
pal foundation lies in that inevitable human pro- 
pensity to classify all those who are in any way 
unlike ourselves, or who merely lie outside our 
own group, as 'fiends,' 'aliens,' and 'barbarians.' 
The Hebrews, though perhaps the best-known 
example, have not been the only group to regard 
themselves a 'chosen people' ; and while we may 
point to Dante's opinion that the Romans of his 
time were ordained to command, and to the mod- 
ern German equivalent of the same doctrine, it 
must be admitted that the passionate assertion of 

[6] 



THE NATURE AND SCOPE 
nationality in the nineteenth century has been 
colored at least by this feeling of a special worth 
or importance in ourselves as contrasted with 
others, a feeling, we must not forget, which the 
Negro, Hindu, and Chinaman shares with the 
most progressive of Europeans. 

Once entertained, the idea that there have been 
certain unique races in the past, and that there is 
one such race in the present, yields itself readily 
to interested elaboration. So the Hegelian theory 
has been replaced, on further consideration, by 
the view which sees all human advancement as 
the varied expression of the power and genius, 
not of the Absolute, but of the Aryan race ; and 
while this conception permitted, at first, of a 
fairly generous interpretation, a more thorough 
application has restricted the definition of the 
conquering race to the dolichocephalic (or long- 
headed) blonds from northern Europe. Wher- 
ever this race has penetrated, there, it would ap- 
pear, the surrounding peoples have been subju- 
gated, and there prosperity and a great civiliza- 
tion have sprung up. So complete is this clue, 
indeed, that any manifestation of genius, whether 
in Palestine, Greece, Italy, or Germany, becomes 
an unequivocal proof of the presence of, at least, 

[7] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 



some members of this supreme race. Conversely, 
wherever the brachycephalic (or short-headed) 
races have made their appearance, decadence has 
straightway followed; nor do the advocates of 
this thorough-going conception shrink from the 
conclusion that progress in the future must de- 
pend upon the increased propagation and the 
physical dominance of the long-headed variety. 
An equally positive, though perhaps less ani- 
mating theory places the emphasis, in seeking to 
account for the differences of human groups, not 
on the physical, but on the mental characteristics 
of races, and from this root has grown the exten- 
sive literature of "race psychology." According 
to this view, the part played in history by any 
aggregation of men is a direct reflection of its 
collective character and mentality. The subject 
and method of this psychology, initiated by Wil- 
helm von Humboldt, seems first to have been 
cultivated by Steinthal and Lazarus, but owes its 
vogue, apparently, to men like Mommsen and 
Renan. While the interest enlisted by the sum- 
mary descriptions of the psychology of peoples 
has been widely extended, the explanation af- 
forded by the procedure is not illuminating, for 
it consists merely in saying that events and insti- 

[8] 



THE NATURE AND SCOPE 

tutions are the outcome of the genius of peoples. 
Thus, for example, it appears that the Greeks 
were a people distinctly marked out by nature as 
freer than other mortals from all that hinders and 
oppresses the activities of the spirit; or, briefly, 
that Greek civilization was the creation of the 
inborn genius of the Greek race. Furthermore, 
the mode of determining the collective charac- 
teristics of groups leaves much room for debate, 
since while one authority may regard the Celt, 
as "a gentle obstinate," another thinks him "tur- 
bulent and vain," and a third declares him to be 
the embodiment of "an indomitable passion for 
danger and adventure." 
When pressed, each of these theories, physical 
and psychological, tends more and more to fall 
back upon the influence of habitat or climate in 
determining the character of groups, and we are 
thus led to consider the type of explanation of- 
fered by anthropogeography. It is argued, for 
instance, that all human varieties are the outcome 
of their several environments. Groups are what 
climate, soil, diet, pursuits, and inherited quali- 
ties have made them. What is true of man him- 
self is no less true of his works, and so it follows 
that racial and cultural zones must coincide, 

[9] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

while a correspondence must exist between these 
and the zones of temperature. Hence we arrive 
at the theory that, in both hemispheres, the iso- 
cultural bands follow the isothermal bands in all 
their deflections. In this view, it is evident, all 
the specific characteristics of humanity — phy- 
sique, temperament, institutions, occupations, 
and ideas — are the more or less immediate reflec- 
tion of habitat, and it is maintained that each 
breed of man which has changed its place of 
domicile has had to adopt the type of culture 
appropriate to the region into which it has pene- 
trated. 

The forms taken by this theory of the depend- 
ence of man on habitat are very numerous, but a 
few illustrations may serve to suggest the wide 
scope of its applications. Thus it has long been 
held that the advancement of man in northern 
Europe was a direct result of the inhospitable 
conditions which forced him to cultivate un- 
precedented habits of industry. Again, it has 
been explained that the extremes of character 
attributed to the Slav are due to the extremes of 
climate on the wind-swept steppes. The long and 
bitter cold, it is said, has enabled the Russian 
peasants to survive, since it has fostered the spirit 

[10] 



THE NATURE AND SCOPE 

of comradeship, and this, in turn, has held them 
together in their mir or village-community. The 
habitat, it also seems, provides the conditions 
which determine the progress or stagnation of 
the group, for agricultural tribes, being bound 
to the soil, are conservative, apathetic, and non- 
progressive, while the nomadic or semi-nomadic 
life sharpens the wits and calls forth courage, 
self-reliance, and ingenuity. By others, again, it 
is argued that the birth and precocious growth of 
civilization are encouraged by a small, isolated, 
and protected habitat, though at a later stage this 
cramps progress, and lends the stamp of arrested 
development to a people like the Greeks. 
The types of theory thus briefly indicated have 
this in common, that they attempt to describe fac- 
tors which may be regarded as operative in all 
human groups, and are thus to be considered as 
offering an explanation on a scientific basis. To 
all appearance, however, it has not seemed neces- 
sary to the exponents of these views to show how 
the factors described could have produced the 
differences which we see around us. Indeed, the 
mode of procedure adopted has been simply to 
explain evident differences by alleging the ante- 
cedence of other differences, less obvious, but 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
still unexplained. Knowledge is not really ad- 
vanced by asserting that all human advancement 
has been due to the presence of some particular 
race. In point of method, the failure lies in the 
fact that the theory gives no insight into the pro- 
cesses through which the assumed physical su- 
periority of the Aryan or Teuton has been trans- 
muted into cultural advancement. But, taken on 
its own terms, and supposing, for the moment, 
that the beginnings of cultural development in 
China and India were associated with the intru- 
sion of Aryans, the theory does not suggest how 
later advances have taken place in these lands, 
and it ignores the fact that there is ample evi- 
dence of notable advancement in Mesopotamia 
and in Egypt prior to any appearance of the 
Aryan race. Similarly, it throws no light upon 
the problem in hand to attribute the special cul- 
tural characteristics of a people to correspond- 
ingly particularized innate qualities. 

In regard to anthropogeography, it may be said 
more particularly that it represents not so much 
an explicit theory as an almost unlimited mass of 
correlations, some vague and unimportant, others 
penetrating and of the highest value. In some 
respects, indeed, this subject, at once new and of 



THE NATURE AND SCOPE 

a remote antiquity, represents, at the present 
time, one of the most hopeful aspects of the study 
of man, for, from its association, however in- 
determinate, with geology, it has gained a 
breadth and an inclusiveness of vision that has 
been denied the better established humanistic 
studies. Nevertheless, a too close association with 
a science already highly elaborated, and a too 
great dependence upon the work of pioneers who 
had not fully entered into the spirit of modern 
scientific method, have led to a logical formalism 
in dealing with its subject-matter which has not 
wholly been in the interests of scientific progress. 
Anthropogeography, in short, provides a great 
body of observations assembled under logically 
arranged headings, but has failed to recognize 
that investigation to be effective must be con- 
ducted in presence of a specific problem. 

Furthermore, in the actual consideration of the 
influence of habitat upon human affairs, there is 
almost invariably apparent, on the part of geog- 
raphers, a certain laxity in regard to the facts of 
historical change. Though habitat and climate 
have, in general, remained constant throughout 
the historical period, civilizations have arisen 
and decayed, to be followed by other civiliza- 

[13] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 



tions under different environmental conditions. 
If it is the hardy northerner who is 'progressive' 
at one time, at another it is the Akkadian and 
Sumerian in the hothouse of the Persian Gulf. 
If the village-community is a response to the 
relentless winter of the Russian steppes, it has 
also persisted in torrid India. Egypt, Phoenicia, 
Crete, and Greece may possibly be regarded as 
protected areas, but if the rise of civilization is 
dependent upon isolation, how shall we account 
for the early development of Lagash and Nip- 
pur? How, too, shall we account for the absence 
of such developments in a hundred spots more 
isolated and protected still? If Greek climate 
and habitat are to be accepted as prepotent in- 
fluences in the production of Periclean Athens, 
and German climate and habitat as determining 
factors in the development of the military power 
of today, why have not these relatively constant 
factors been equally operative in past and present 
times? 

Evidently, then, neither the race theory, nor 
that of habitat offers an adequate basis for an ex- 
planation of how man has come to be as he is, and 
hence we are driven to inquire what other types 
of theory have been advanced. 

[14] 



THE NATURE AND SCOPE 

3. From a wholly different point of view there 
has been presented a theory to account for the 
inequalities among men which has been accorded 
an acceptance as wide as the theory of race, but 
by a very different constituency, for while the 
former may be said to appeal more directly to 
militarists and certain groups attracted by mod- 
ern biological ideas, the economic theory of 
Marx and Engels has found the great body of its 
adherents among the workers immediately in- 
volved in the "class struggle." 

Fundamentally, the point of departure of Marx 
is the idea that the economic factor dominates all 
the other factors of human existence, and his in- 
sistence on this view, notwithstanding the exag- 
geration it involves, has had the beneficial effect 
of directing the attention of students to the im- 
portance of a series of facts which, previously, 
had been very generally ignored. In a measure, 
Marx also may be said to have employed the 
method of science, for what he attempted to do 
was to isolate and describe a particular factor or 
process manifested in human affairs. But in this 
undertaking, notwithstanding the profound in- 
fluence which his writings have had upon mod- 
ern thought, the limitations of his outlook, and 

[15] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
his imperfect appreciation of the complexities of 
the problem, have stood in the way of a perma- 
nent success. It should, however, be remembered 
that Marx did not set himself to work out a scien- 
tific problem, but to carry forward a social prop- 
aganda; he was not attempting to analyze the 
elements of history; his interest was excited by 
the special problem of labor under modern con- 
ditions, and his dominating aim was to account 
for this particular phenomenon in its present 
aspect. Hence he neither considered the entire 
field of economic activity in modern life, nor the 
conditions of labor in any other than the capital- 
istic form of society. 

It must not be supposed, however, that Marx 
and Engels, while maintaining that- the great 
moving power in all historical events was the 
economic development of society, failed to recog- 
nize that they had investigated only that form of 
economic organization under which they them- 
selves were actually living. "We ought," Engels 
remarked, "to study, at least in their essential 
features and taken as terms of comparison, the 
other forms which have preceded it in time, or 
exist alongside of it in less developed countries." 
And he stated frankly: "Marx and I are partly 

[16] 



THE NATURE AND SCOPE 
responsible for the fact that the younger men 
have sometimes laid more stress on the economic 
fact than was necessary" ; but this overemphasis, 
as he explained, arose from the exigencies of the 
debate into which their main contention precipi- 
tated them. It is not remarkable, therefore, that 
the Marxian interpretation of history should 
have failed to elucidate the means through which 
so different results have been arrived at in Asia 
and in Europe, in ancient and in modern times. 
The fault, if there be any, lies not with these great 
initiators who demonstrated the practical utility 
of an investigation of the elements of history, but 
with their successors who have failed to carry 
forward and to broaden the scope of the inquiries 
which they set on foot. 
This theory, then, like those previously men- 
tioned, is unacceptable as an explanation of how 
man has come to be as he is, for, like the others, 
it is based upon a limited view of the facts, and 
represents a projection of a single factor upon the 
complexity of human experience. Practically 
speaking, the failure in all these cases has been 
due to a lack of appreciation of the necessity of 
a preliminary study of method. To be acceptable, 
any such theory must be applicable to 'backward* 

[17] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

as well as to 'advanced' groups; it must apply 
equally to all periods of history in all lands; it 
must apply, furthermore, to the 'backward' and 
'advanced' members of all groups, and hence to 
the experience of the individual in the world 
today. 

4. The number and variety of the theories 
which have heretofore been advanced should be 
convincing proof that in approaching a problem 
of this magnitude we must first endeavor to ar- 
rive at a clear understanding of the method to be 
followed in conducting the inquiry. There can be 
no question that the investigation before us must 
rest upon an examination of the facts of human 
history, for we ourselves are aware that any pres- 
ent situation in which we may happen to be in- 
volved is the outcome of what has gone before. 
But the practical problem with which we are 
confronted appears only when we come to ask 
how the concrete facts of history are to be util- 
ized in order to explain the status of man as we 
find him everywhere throughout the world. 

During the nineteenth century, and indeed up 
to the present, the student of history has carried 
on his work in accordance with the assumption 
that such an explanation would be afforded by a 

[18] 



THE NATURE AND SCOPE 

statement, in the form of narrative, of what had 
happened in the past. 

Now, of all possible modes of explanation, the 
earliest and the most universal is that naive form 
which is represented in story-telling. This con- 
sists in going back to some selected beginning, 
and carrying forward a narrative of happenings 
from that point to the situation which the narra- 
tor has undertaken to make clear. It matters 
nothing that, in its earliest manifestations, his- 
torical narrative starts with some imaginary be- 
ginning, such as the Mosaic account of Creation 
or Hesiod's Golden Age, the principle is the 
same in all cases, namely, the acceptance of a 
situation that comes first, and the emergence 
from this of a complexity which has its conclu- 
sion in a known eventuality. 

The initial difficulty for the historian, once his 
starting-point has been decided upon, is that he 
cannot include all the available facts of past oc- 
currences in the narrative which as a literary 
artist he is bent upon creating. The creation, as 
in all art, involves the selection of facts for pre- 
sentation, and while this selection must depend 
ultimately upon what the narrator or artist him- 
self is, it can be made only in the light of some 

[19] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

conception he has formed of the course of events, 
of some interest or emotion awakened by what 
he believes has taken place. 
The most obvious basis of selection is the inter- 
est enlisted by what is simply curious or unusual. 
This is represented, in earlier writings, by the 
miscellaneous nature of the records set down by 
medieval chroniclers and annalists, and, in the 
work of contemporary scholars, by the recurrent 
statement: "What really happened was not what 
you and everyone else has believed, but this that 
I alone have discovered." On a broader plane, 
the selection is determined by the interest taken 
in the outcome of some specific series of events, 
more particularly when this leads to an impres- 
sive denouement, such as the defeat of Xerxes by 
the relatively insignificant forces of the Greeks. 
As, however, events but rarely work out to a com- 
pletely satisfactory ending — witness Thucydides 
— historical writers have fallen back upon the 
method, characteristic in the drama, of depicting 
personal character revealing itself in the stress of 
critical circumstances. Following this line of de- 
velopment, historiography has tended to empha- 
size the part played by the individual in what 
has happened, relying more and more for its ex- 

[20] 



THE NATURE AND SCOPE 

planations upon* the speculative interpretation of 
individual motives, and justifying this procedure 
on an assumed similarity of the workings of the 
human mind in similar situations. 

At a later stage, reflection on the seemingly 
meaningless changes of fortune revealed in 
events leads to the conscious effort to reach an 
explanatory basis through the formulation of 
some concept of the underlying meaning of the 
course of history. Thus, for example, one recent 
effort is directed towards showing that the mean- 
ing lies in "the existence of a mental conflict as to 
the means by which happiness is to be attained," 
while another discovers history to be "the story 
of man's increasing ability to control energy." 
Such projections of abstract points of view have 
been infinite in their variety, ranging from that 
of Orosius who saw in events the hand of God so 
ordering at all times the affairs of men that dire 
calamity should unfailingly overtake neglect of 
his service, to that of a contemporary who be- 
lieves that "modern science is crowned by the 
conception of an ordered progress in history." 
But while, at this point, an extended resume of 
theories would be of advantage as emphasizing 
the fact that every successive generation attains 

[21] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

new points of view, one must perforce assume 
familiarity with such expositions of philosophies 
of history as have been provided by Flint and 
Barth, for what is really germane to the present 
discussion is the residual fact that today the 
search for an underlying principle in history is 
dominated by the concept of "progress." 

It may be well here to point out that the idea of 
"progress" stands in much the same relation to 
the study of man as that of "evolution" to the 
study of the forms of life. But, whereas, in the 
hands of Darwin, the study of biological evolu- 
tion passed from the merely speculative into the 
scientific stage, the study of human progress is 
still in the pre-Darwinian period. Thus the so- 
ciologist still sets before himself the aim of dis- 
covering "the law of progress," while the histo- 
rian, assuming "progress" without further ques- 
tion, displays in narrative form the gradual emer- 
gence of features which he personally regards as 
distinctively modern or as particularly desirable. 
In neither the one case or the other has the inves- 
tigator concerned himself to apply to the subject- 
matter in hand the method of analysis by which 
Darwin was enabled to substantiate the specu- 

[22] 



THE NATURE AND SCOPE 

lative concept of "evolution" by the scientific 
theory of "natural selection." 

If we are to appreciate the implications of the 
idea of "progress," it will be necessary to observe 
that this concept is based upon the assumption 
that history — the entire course of events in time — 
is unitary, that it constitutes a single sequence of 
happenings in which progress is revealed. Now, 
disregarding the use which is being made of this 
idea in contemporary philosophical discussions, 
and concerning ourselves only with its place in 
historical study, it will readily be perceived that 
the concept of "progress" is just the reflection of 
a convention in accordance with which we base 
our presentation of what has happened on the 
records handed down to us by certain European 
peoples with whose languages we are more or 
less familiar. Frankly, our concepts are at the 
mercy of such information as we have at com- 
mand, and so the term "ancient history" suggests, 
not diversified series of facts embodying the 
experiences of mankind during a certain period 
of time, but a narrative restatement of accounts 
which record the varying fortunes of some of the 
political units of Mediterranean lands, more 
particularly Greece and Rome. We of the twenti- 

[23] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
eth century, with all our opportunities for ac- 
quaintance with the history of Asia, have not 
risen above the limitations of our predecessors, 
and continue to imagine that we have arrived at 
a synthesis of human history when we have con- 
structed a narrative by selecting parts or periods 
of the history of one European country after 
another which seem to us as of special and pecu- 
liar significance. On the other hand, if we look a 
little further, it will be to discover that human 
history is not unitary, but pluralistic ; that what 
we are given is not one history, but many; and, 
that the concept of "progress" is arrived at by the 
maintenance of a Europocentric tradition and 
the elimination from consideration of the activi- 
ties of all peoples whose civilization does not at 
once appear as contributory to our own. 
What, then, is essential for us to realize is that 
the methodological assumption upon which the 
work of the historian is based, namely, that we 
may hope to arrive at an explanation of how man 
has come to be as he is through the narrative state- 
ment of what has happened in the past, is, criti- 
cally considered, inadmissible. Narrative is a 
form or genre of literature, and in this lies its 
forceful appeal, for, so long as men endure, the 

[24] 



THE NATURE AND SCOPE 

tale of what men have done, and how they have 
striven, will never lose its interest and attraction. 
Furthermore, so long as men continue to question 
the meaning of life, the attempt will be contin- 
ually renewed to grasp the ultimate significance 
of the course taken by events in the past. But be- 
yond the romance of human deeds, and quite 
apart from any effort to penetrate the inscruta- 
bility of fate, there remains for scientific investi- 
gation the vital and fundamental problem how 
man in all his diversity has come to be as we find 
him now. 
There are many histories, and this pluralism 
reveals our task as historical students, which is 
not to explain occurrences by the intercalation of 
hypothetical motives, or to create narratives 
based upon the selection of events which seem to 
us of importance in view of some unverified 
theory of progress, but to compare these several 
histories with the object of ascertaining what it 
is they hold in common. The fact is that an under- 
standing of "how things have come to be as they 
are" can be arrived at only through a study of 
what has happened in the past, but this under- 
standing is not furthered by the conventional 
construction of narratives. What is requisite is 

[25] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
that we should compare the events, the things 
that have happened, without the intervention of 
the subjective interests, often unacknowledged 
because unconsciously held, of historical writers. 
Precisely what we need to begin with are great 
bodies of historical data, annals or fasti, relating 
to all human groups without distinction, which 
have not been subjected to the selective activities 
of the literary artist and the philosopher. 

Having thus seen that the conventionalized 
method of the historian is inadequate, it now re- 
mains to inquire how the concrete facts of history 
may be utilized in dealing with the problem 
before us. 

5. As it is imperative for us to arrive at an un- 
derstanding of the method to be employed in 
dealing with the problem of how man has come 
to be as he is, and as the narrative method hitherto 
relied upon by the historian sacrifices the wealth 
of concrete detail to the personal or speculative 
interest of individuals, it may be well to observe 
how men in other fields of history, such as Astron- 
omy, Geology, and Biology, have conducted 
their investigations. 

In the first place, each of these subjects is con- 
fronted with the complexity of a present status 

[26] 



THE NATURE AND SCOPE 

which is assumed to be the outcome of all the 
changes that have taken place up to the present 
time. Secondly, in each of these cases the object 
or aim of the investigation is to arrive at an un- 
derstanding of how this present status has come 
to be as it is, and the inquiry takes the form of an 
examination of the nature of the changes which 
have taken place. 

What disguises the identity of the problem that 
presents itself to the student of nature and the 
student of man is that while the latter is provided 
with a great body of dated evidence for what has 
happened in the past, the former is left without 
any strictly chronological data, and is forced to 
be content with a merely relative time-order in 
his historical facts. In short, in his efforts to in- 
terpret the records of the past, the historian of 
nature is deprived of the assistance of the testi- 
mony of human witnesses. Nevertheless, while 
this handicap has immeasurably increased the 
difficulties in his way, it has not prevented him 
from contributing in a most notable manner to 
the sum of human knowledge. 

It may fairly be said that the greater success of 
the student of nature in arriving at a scientific 
method for dealing with any history has been due 

[27] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
to the greater difficulties which he has encoun- 
tered. Thus while the historian of man has en- 
gaged his efforts in creating narratives based 
upon details arranged in chronological order, 
the historian of nature has been forced to prove 
that the facts upon which he must rely may even 
be regarded as historical data. Indeed, this proof 
was the main endeavor of the great group of 
scientists in the first half of the nineteenth century 
whose work may be said to have culminated in 
the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 
1859. The difficulties of the situation in which 
the advocates of an historical point of view were 
placed, not the least being the almost universal 
acceptance of the theory of creation, necessitated 
a careful consideration of the method to be em- 
ployed, and so forced the recognition of the 
axiom that any present status is to be regarded as 
the outcome of the continued operation of natural 
processes, which was accepted as the task of 
science to discover. 

Thus the geologist, having arrived at criteria 
for determining the time-order of strata, pro- 
ceeded to examine the disposition of the rocks 
in every accessible area of the earth's surface. 
Now, while the rocks are assumed to have been 

[28] 



THE NATURE AND SCOPE 

laid down, as a result of the operation of natural 
processes, in horizontal layers, they are actually 
found in an infinite variety of positions. Hence it 
became necessary to show how these dislocations 
had been effected, and what one might speak of 
as the explanatory "stock in trade" of the geolo- 
gist consists in the series of processes which are 
manifested in the geological history of the earth. 
As a result of this way of looking at things, the 
geologist comes to see around him the evidences 
of how the earth has come to be as it is, and he 
comes to regard the landscape before him, not 
merely as a static disposition of picturesque form, 
and light and shadow, but as an embodiment of 
constant activities which, in the course of time, 
have brought this scenery to its present aspect, 
and will continue to modify it throughout all 
time to come. He can still feel the grandeur of 
the Alps, and still appreciate the beauty of Fuji- 
yama, but in addition to the aesthetic pleasure, 
the sights convey to his mind an added wealth of 
suggestion regarding the ceaseless workings of 
Nature. 

Again, the biologist has in all times endeavored 
to account for the infinite variety of the forms of 
life, but even in the eighteenth century no further 

[29] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
progress had been made than is represented by 
the belief that species were just so many distinct 
and permanent creations of God. In the nine- 
teenth century, however, a new perspective was 
gained, and men began to perceive an historical 
depth in the relations of species. When the sys- 
tematic classification of plants and animals had 
been carried to a certain elaboration, it was dis- 
cerned, through the co-operation of geology, that 
the arrangement in order from simplest to most 
complex represented a time-order from early to 
late. As an additional result of the close associa- 
tion of geologists and biologists, the latter also 
adopted from their co-workers the axiom that 
things had come to be as they are through the 
continued operation of natural processes. Dar- 
win's method, in fact, is just that of his geological 
contemporaries applied to a new subject-matter; 
and his object was the discovery of the process 
or processes through which new species have 
successively come into existence. In other words, 
what he planned to carry out was an analysis of 
the elements of biological history. 
Whether Darwin was successful in his under- 
taking is for biologists to decide, though up to 
the present time they have not given sufficient 

[30] 



THE NATURE AND SCOPE 

attention to his method and to the nature of the 
assumptions upon which his theory was based. 
All that need be observed in the present connec- 
tion, however, is that, in putting forward his 
theory of "natural selection," Darwin believed 
that he had described the process through which 
the forms of life have come to be as they are 
today. Should it nevertheless appear that "nat- 
ural selection" is inadequate to explain the origin 
of species, this conclusion would not invalidate 
the fundamental assumption that such processes 
are actually in operation ; it would simply mean 
that Darwin's particular attempt at analysis was 
incomplete, perhaps even erroneous throughout. 
What would then remain to be done would be to 
make an entirely new analysis with greater re- 
gard to precision in method. It must be remem- 
bered, whatever the decision, that the theory of 
"natural selection" has created an interest in even 
the lowliest forms of life that did not previously 
exist, and that it has opened the eyes of men, in 
a wholly new sense, to the ways by which Nature 
accomplishes her ever varying and ever wonder- 
ful results. Nor should it be overlooked that the 
method of historical inquiry by which the natu- 
ral scientist has attempted to explain how things 

[31] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

have come to be as they are, has led to results 
which have been of the highest practical impor- 
tance to mankind. 

It has been suggested above that astronomers, 
geologists, and biologists have been compelled to 
conduct historical inquiries without the aid of 
specifically dated materials, and there can be 
little doubt that this deficiency has not only been 
difficult to overcome, but has, in the case of biol- 
ogy, at least, led to far-reaching controversies 
and misunderstandings, and even to unconscious 
assumptions which have become stumbling- 
blocks in the path of knowledge. When, there- 
fore, we consider the obstacles which have been 
encountered by the students of nature, it must 
be apparent that the student of man is placed in 
a unique and enviable position, through the pos- 
session of dated evidence, for the investigation of 
the elements of human history. Indeed, the 
chronological record, incomplete as it is, frees 
the human historian from some of the greater 
difficulties by which the historian of nature is 
confronted. 

On the other hand, it would seem that this un- 
paralleled aid to investigation has, in itself, 
threatened to become an insurmountable obstacle 

[32] 



THE NATURE AND SCOPE 

to the advancement of science, for the interest ex- 
cited by the effort to perfect this record, blinds 
us, apparently, to the infinite possibilities which 
it places in our hands. The historian, fortified by 
an ancient convention, is so completely absorbeoT 
in the details before him, and in perfecting his 
own critical technique, that he leaves to one side 
the wider problems of historical method. When, 
however, these problems are actually taken up, 
it comes to be seen that historical method is the 
same whatever the history investigated — whether 
that of the stellar universe, of the earth, of the 
forms of life upon the earth, or of man. It comes 
to be seen that in each case the problem is the 
same, namely, to show how things have come to 
be as they are ; that in each case the investigation 
presupposes the antecedence of innumerable 
series of historical events; that in each case the 
inquiry is based upon the assumption or axiom 
that things have come to be as they are through 
the continued operation of natural processes, and 
that these processes are to be discovered only 
through examination of what has happened in 
the past. And here it must be clearly stated, since 
this is a point upon which much misunderstand- 
ing has arisen through Darwin's acceptance of 

[33] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
Lyell's method, that the investigation of the pro- 
cesses of change must be based upon the facts of 
history, and cannot be discovered by examination 
of the results given in the present. On the other 
hand, if our inferences from the historical data 
are correct, they should be verifiable by appli- 
cation to things as they are. 
6. It has been urged repeatedly that the en- 
deavor to arrive at an analysis of the elements of 
history is no longer "history," since this, of neces- 
sity, has its sole end in narrative. It might be 
urged in contravention of this argument that the 
word "history" originally meant "inquiry," and 
only secondarily came to be applied to the em- 
bodiment of the results of inquiry in the particu- 
lar form of narrative. But, in reality, the situa- 
tion is too serious to admit of debate in regard 
to the application of a word having already 
many recognized meanings. "History," in the 
widest sense, means all that has happened in the 
past, and, more particularly, all that has hap- 
pened to the human race. Now, the whole body 
of historical students is in possession of a vast 
accumulation of information in regard to the 
former activities and experiences of mankind, 
and the problem which is uppermost at the pres- 

[34] 



THE NATURE AND SCOPE 

ent time is how this accumulated information — 
which already far exceeds the possibility of state- 
ment in any narrative synthesis — may be utilized 
to throw light upon the difficulties that confront 
mankind. In the world as it is today, is the his- 
torical scholar to look forward to contributing 
the results of his specialized researches to some 
later Cambridge Modern History, or is he, on 
the other hand, to entertain the hope that his 
investigations may stand beside those of the 
biologist, for example, as contributing, through 
an added knowledge of the operations of nature, 
to the welfare of the human race? 

Yet, while there are many who insist upon the 
conventional aim of reducing all historical facts 
to narrative, there are unmistakable evidences 
that other historical students are seeking a new 
outlet for their activities, and a new utilization 
for their knowledge. It is only necessary to ob* 
serve the interest accorded to Lord Acton's pro- 
ject for a History of Freedom, it is only neces- 
sary to take cognizance of the studies which mul- 
tiply daily on the religious, economic, geographi- 
cal, and other phases of modern history to see 
that men are reaching out in directions unknown 
to the older historiography, directions which are 

[35] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
manifestly tentative approximations to a scien- 
tific standpoint. For the undercurrent of all this 
awakened interest is analytical ; and whether we 
set ourselves to isolate the strand of "freedom" 
or that of "class struggle," the influence of "sea 
power" or that of "religious revivals," we are 
contributing, in the long run, to an analysis of 
the elements of history. 

Only an optimist, however, would suggest that 
this new movement in historical study had found 
itself, and was thoroughly conscious of its meth- 
odological foundations. The fact is that while we 
are gradually escaping from the dominance of 
narrative we have not as yet acquired the width 
of outlook necessary for the pursuit of analysis 
on a truly humanistic basis. Our vision is still 
focussed upon Europe and the doings of Euro- 
peans, and while we look with a kindly interest 
at "the map of the world as known to Herodo- 
tus," we seem unable to appreciate the fact that 
relatively the scope of our own historical in- 
quiries is less extensive than his. By one or an- 
other eminent contemporary authority, the study 
of history has been regarded as limited to the in- 
vestigation of written documents; as limited to 
the Christian era; as limited to southern and 

[36] 



THE NATURE AND SCOPE 

western Europe; as limited to political events. 
Nevertheless, there has long been a tendency 
towards a wider outlook, but, as a matter of fact, 
the development of this broader interest has been 
forced to wait upon an extension of knowledge 
which has only been achieved within the last few 
decades through the progress of archaeological 
discoveries and of Oriental studies. With this dif- 
ficulty removed, we may face the situation that 
the analytical study of history must be founded 
upon a comparison of the particular histories of 
all human groups, and must be actuated by the 
conscious effort to take cognizance of all the 
available facts. If this seems too much, let us re- 
member that in a generation we have moved back 
from Greece to Egypt, from Egypt to Babylonia, 
and that now, thanks to the Carnegie Institution, 
an even more remote vista has been opened up by 
the excavations at Anau. The minimal unit of 
history is not a series of empires, following each 
other in time, from the plain of Shinar to the 
British Isles, but the continental mass of the 
Older World taken as a whole, and throughout 
the time occupied by the generations of men. 
Only with such an outlook may we hope, through 
the application of analysis, to discover the factors 

[37] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

and processes of history, and thus arrive at a 
scientific knowledge of the way in which man 
has come to be as he is. 



Observation of the groups into which mankind 
is broken up leads us to question how the differ- 
ences between them have come to be what they 
are, and hence to examine such explanations of 
the problem as have hitherto been advanced. A 
consideration of certain typical solutions that 
have been offered brings us to the conclusion that 
in every case these have been based upon a re- 
stricted view of the facts, and thus forces upon 
us the necessity of taking up the entire problem 
anew. 

Seeing, however, that this problem is one of the 
greatest magnitude and difficulty, it would seem 
to be a proper precaution, in advance of embark- 
ing upon the undertaking, to examine the meth- 
odological equipment on which we shall be 
forced to rely. As a result of such an examination, 
it becomes apparent that the traditional method 
still adhered to by the historian, the statement of 
what has taken place in the form of narrative, 
does not lead to any explanatory conclusion ; and 

[38] 



THE NATURE AND SCOPE 

so, if the whole attempt is not to be abandoned as 
vain and chimerical, it becomes necessary to find 
out how investigators have proceeded in other 
fields of history. This leads to the discovery that 
geologists and biologists utilize the historical in- 
formation at their command, not for the purpose 
of constructing narratives of happenings, but to 
determine what have been the processes through 
which things have come to be as they are. 
The point of view thus gained at once clarifies 
the situation, for it reveals the significance of the 
chronological data which the human historian of 
today has inherited from his predecessors; it 
throws light upon the nature of the activities of 
a large and increasing number of historical stu- 
dents ; and it displays the importance and utility 
of the great residuary body of historical facts 
which historiographers have been unable to in- 
corporate in their narratives. Furthermore, it 
shows that the objections which have been urged 
regarding the application of scientific method 
as falling within the province of the historical 
student are negligible, for a knowledge of the 
factors and processes of history can be arrived at 
only through the study of history, and this type of 

[39] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

inquiry provides an opportunity by which the 
extraordinary wealth of dated material that is 
characteristic of human history may be made to 
subserve the highest interests of mankind. 



[40] 



II 

THE GEOGRAPHICAL FACTOR 
IN HISTORY 

i. Having arrived at a formulation of the prob- 
lem to be investigated, and at a general concep- 
tion of the method to be followed, it next becomes 
necessary to consider the character of the evi- 
dence to be employed. Freeman was far from be- 
ing alone in the belief that, while the recovery of 
the ancient records of Eastern peoples was to be 
regarded with pleasure, the historian could not 
accept these as materials for the study which was 
his own. This is an artificial distinction and an 
improper limitation to research, and, indeed, the 
greatest obstacle to the scientific study of history 
has been the conventional attitude, of which this 
is an example, by which the attention of histo- 
rians has been restricted to Europe and the activ- 
ities of Europeans, for such limitation would im- 
pose an absolute bar to the application of the 
comparative method. If, however, the many his- 
tories with which we are confronted, histories of 

[41] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

India, China, and Europe, are to be compared, 
this involves the assumption that the essential 
content of history is everywhere the same, that 
human history is made up of the same materials 
throughout, and woven upon the same loom. 
Simple as this declaration may appear to be, it 
involves conclusions of such far-reaching im- 
portance that it becomes essential to examine the 
bases for an acceptance of the homogeneity of 
history. 

Europe and Asia are indissoluble, and are sepa- 
rated in name only. When we stop to consider the 
map of the eastern hemisphere it is at once appar- 
ent that Europe is just a westward extension or 
peninsula of the great land-mass of Eurasia. The 
convention by which we regard the two conti- 
nents as divided is not an outgrowth of modern 
geographical knowledge, but represents simply 
a traditional nomenclature which we have in- 
herited from immemorial antiquity. Physically, 
Europe and Asia are continuous : the great north- 
ern plain of Asia penetrates into the heart of 
Europe; the mountain barrier which, alternately 
expanding to enclose great basins like those of 
Hungary, Persia, and Tibet, and focussing in 
knots like the Alps, Ararat, and the Pamirs, 

[42] 



GEOGRAPHICAL FACTOR 

stretches from Atlantic to Pacific, is crossed only 
by occasional passes; the line of depressions, 
conspicuous in the Mediterranean, runs through 
the Black, the Caspian, and the Aral seas, 
through lakes like Balkash, Issik, Zaisan, and 
Baikal, from west to farthest east; the desert 
belt lies stretched, a veritable cincture, Sahara, 
Arabia, Iran, Turkestan, and Takla Makan, 
across the body of the older world. 

Again, if we consider the distribution of peo- 
ples, there is no point at which we may draw a 
line of separation between Asia and Europe. 
There are representatives of European stocks to 
be found throughout the eastern continent, while, 
conversely, in the West there is no nation without 
its quantum of Asiatic blood : there are Finns in 
the North, Mongols in Central Europe, Arabs in 
Spain, Turks on the Aegean, and Semites every- 
where. 

Furthermore, in their history, the two parts of 
Eurasia are inextricably bound together. Mac- 
kinder has shown how much light may be thrown 
upon European history by regarding it as sub- 
ordinate to Asiatic ; and while we may question 
Ujfalvy's saying that Rome fell because the 
Chinese built a wall, we cannot deny that the 

[43] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
ancient history of Europe is as incomprehensible 
without a knowledge of the Nearer East as medi- 
eval history without reference to the migrations 
of Asiatic peoples from the northern steppes. 
The oldest of historians held the idea that the 
epochs of European history were marked by al- 
ternating movements across the imaginary line 
that separates East and West; to us these move- 
ments are distinguishable in remotely prehistoric 
times, they have left their legible traces on the 
languages we speak, they are evident in periods 
of Greek history unknown to Herodotus, and are 
already modern with the expeditions of Darius 
and Alexander, with the appearance of Huns 
and Moslems in the West and of Frankish king- 
doms in the East. The tide has turned, we may 
say, since Russia conquered Siberia and Britain 
became paramount in Hindustan, but the East 
has not been vanquished, and, possibly, the re- 
turning tide may not long be delayed. 

Something more than this intimacy of relation, 
however, is necessary in order to demonstrate 
that the history of man in Europe and Asia is 
homogeneous. The fundamental basis of argu- 
ment for holding that the History of man every- 
where is of the same fabric, does not rest upon 

[44] 



GEOGRAPHICAL FACTOR 

the interconnections of events, but may be stated 
in the form that the varying experiences of 
human groups have been similarly conditioned 
by the varying aspects of the conformation of the 
globe. Man cannot escape the physical world in 
which he lives, nor its infinite diversification; 
this is obvious, but it will require some illustra- 
tion to make clear the fact that the even-handed 
dominance of nature leads inevitably to widely 
different results in the lives of men. 

2. Europe is visibly a projection from the block 
of Eurasia, but if we examine the configuration 
of the larger area it will be found that there are 
other projections to the south and east. India, in- 
deed, is easily recognizable as a peninsula, but 
China lies quite as completely outside the quad- 
rilateral of the central mass. Comparing these 
three, which, incidentally, contain together by 
far the greater part of all the inhabitants of the 
globe, it will be discovered that China and India, 
though seemingly more closely united to the cen- 
tral block, are, from the point of view of human 
accessibility, much more completely set apart 
than Europe. For while the latter lies exposed 
and open to the center, through the level plains 
of Russia and the convenient approach of the 

[45] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean, the 
former lie behind the protecting bulk of the 
highest and most difficult mountain system in the 
world. Hence India may be reached only by 
utilizing one or other of a few tortuous routes 
through the towering mountains on its north- 
western frontier, while China, similarly, enjoys 
the protection of the inaccessible mountains of 
Tibet on its western flank, and of the wide- 
extending deserts to the northwest. In either case, 
the routes by which the borders of the country 
may be reached are few and strictly defined, and 
are impracticable in face of an organized de- 
fence ; and it will also be observed that both in 
China and in India the entire country stretches 
away from the gateway by which alone access 
may be gained, and the defence of this protects 
the land from molestation. In the case of Europe, 
on the other hand, all this is changed, for here 
there is no single or restricted strategic point at 
which the whole area may be defended, and, as 
a consequence, its penetration to the farthest re- 
cesses has been repeated and complete. Here, 
then, in its very simplest form is an example of 
homogeneity, inasmuch as the fortunes, expressed 
in history, of the inhabitants of these areas have 

[46] 



GEOGRAPHICAL FACTOR 

turned primarily upon the relative accessibility 
of the land. 
The principal reason, apart from the concentra- 
tion of attention upon the affairs of Europe, why 
this close dependence of history upon the irregu- 
larities of the surface of the earth has not been 
fully recognized, seems to be the unavoidable 
tendency to regard as interchangeable or synony- 
mous the geographical name of a land and the 
title of its dominant political power. Thus we 
speak of "the history of China" thinking at once 
of political happenings and of a certain area of 
the earth's surface which we Europeans have 
agreed to call by this name. But the subject of the 
historian's discourse is not an actual physical 
land, he considers this only as the seat of a par- 
ticular political organization, and hence a more 
careful usage would distinguish between the title 
of the political unit and the name of the country 
over which its jurisdiction extends. It would, 
indeed, obviate misunderstanding if we were to 
speak habitually of the governmental unit, coin- 
cident with the geographical area which we call 
"China," as the "Middle Kingdom," Chung 
Kwo, Hwa Kwo, or any of the titles used by the 
Li Min or Han Ten themselves, for then we 

[47] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
would recognize more easily that the political 
organization has not always been, and strictly 
speaking is not now, equated with the geographi- 
cal area. 

This consideration leads to the recognition of 
another aspect of homogeneity, which is, that the 
political organizations dealt with in History 
have all come into being at definite and restricted 
spots, from which, subsequently, they have ex- 
panded. Indeed, no intimate knowledge of his- 
tory is necessary to reveal how limited were the 
original geographical areas from which grew the 
political units known as the Roman, Chinese, 
Russian, and British empires. A uniformity of 
this sort is clearly of interest in and for itself ; it 
becomes of great significance, however, when we 
turn to examine the elements common to all such 
cases, and to see in these small beginnings the 
universal influence of geographical factors. 

Various attempts, already alluded to, have been 
made to discover common elements in the begin- 
nings of early civilizations. The difficulty in all 
these cases has been that the investigator has 
limited his observation to the lands of the Nearer 
East, and has failed to extend the comparison to 
all known instances of the emergence of political 

[48] 



GEOGRAPHICAL FACTOR 

units. So, while at first sight it may appear that 
these beginnings have some relation to the irri- 
gable valleys of rivers like the Nile and the 
Euphrates, further consideration will show, on 
the one hand, that there were valleys of this 
character in which civilizations did not arise, 
and, on the other, that civilizations have made 
their appearance in quite different situations. 
Some part of the difficulty that has been expe- 
rienced in the attempt to isolate the common 
factors in the different instances of the emergence 
of advanced groups is unquestionably due to the 
use of such vague and all-inclusive terms as 
"civilization." If, however, we restrict the in- 
quiry, for the moment, to the beginnings of 
political organization, a working basis for com- 
parison will be obtained which will be found to 
lead to definite and verifiable results. 
When, therefore, we come to compare the dif- 
ferent cases in which political units can be seen 
to emerge, it is first to be observed that these units 
are restricted in every case to small areas, and, 
when the common character of these areas is ex- 
amined, it is demonstrable that they are termini 
of routes of travel, and hence points of pressure 

[49] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
which have been strictly determined by the 
physical conformation of the earth's surface. 

It may be well, as far as possible, to envisage the 
situation. South of the great Eurasian plain, the 
mountain barrier and the desert belt offer very 
real obstacles to human movement; the actual 
ways, restricted to practicable passes and suffi- 
ciently watered routes, provide but limited pos- 
sibilities in lines of travel. Hence supposing that 
any considerable body of men should, for any 
reason whatever, be driven from an established 
habitat to seek a new place of abode, the world 
would be "open" to it only in the most general 
sense. In such a case, indeed, any one choice 
would severely restrict all the movements that 
were to follow, and with each step in any given 
direction, the options for the future would be- 
come ever fewer. If now we turn to observe the 
habitable extremities to which the routes lead, it 
is manifest that a theoretical first migrating 
group will settle down where conditions are en- 
durable, but a second will find itself confronted 
by the first as occupants in possession. In what- 
ever manner this situation may be met, and in 
certain cases there is evidence that the earlier 
group moved on, the time comes when the ques- 

[50] 



GEOGRAPHICAL FACTOR 

tion of occupancy must be fought out at the gate- 
way. In other words, while a little effort will 
serve to move a single railroad car on the track, 
a long line of cars lying ahead cannot be set in 
motion by any amount of mere human pressure 
exerted at one end. 

Where these conditions have been fulfilled, 
political organizations have arisen, sooner or 
later, throughout the Eurasian continent. Thus 
in China and in India, which, as has already been 
pointed out, are pockets on a gigantic scale, the 
earliest appearance of political units is just with- 
in the entrance or opening. Something of the 
same general character is to be seen in England, 
where the earliest political units came into exist- 
ence along the line of greatest exposure to the 
continent, while, just as in China and India, the 
population of the more remote and inaccessible 
areas of the kingdom have scarcely been politi- 
cized up to the present day. 

All the termini of routes are not, however, of 
this Indo-Chinese pattern, and Mesopotamia af- 
fords an example of a different kind. Here, in- 
deed, is a land which is accessible from every 
quarter, so that it may be regarded as the focus 
of routes leading in from different directions. 

[51] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

Nevertheless, the phenomena exhibited are of 
exactly the same character; political organiza- 
tions come into existence at the point of pressure, 
and the only difference between this case and the 
former is a difference in the degree of exposure, 
which turns, not upon the activity of men, but 
upon the physical disposition of mountains, 
rivers, and deserts. Furthermore, if we think of 
the Euphrates and Tigris, we may see that as 
water would rise in a river in presence of some 
obstacle, political units make their appearance 
higher and higher upstream as successive en- 
trants make their way along the different avenues 
of approach. 

Stated thus, even in the most general terms, it 
becomes evident that everywhere the beginnings 
of political organization have been determined 
by the physical disposition of the land. It will 
have been observed, however, that this determi- 
nant influence of routes has been dependent upon 
the presence of human beings, that it comes into 
play only in case of the movement of peoples. 
Hence the origin of these movements becomes a 
matter of primary importance, more particu- 
larly as the homogeneity of history is further ex- 

[52] 



GEOGRAPHICAL FACTOR 
hibited in the dependence of these movements or 
migrations upon man's physical surroundings. 

3. With practical uniformity, the view taken of 
the origin of migrations is that these movements 
have been the necessary outcome or manifesta- 
tion of the "natural increase" or "automatic ex- 
cess" of population. Nothing indeed could well 
appear simpler to the modern mind than this 
transference to earlier times of the typically 
nineteenth-century picture of ever flowing 
streams of emigration finding their way to distant 
colonies. Yet, convincing as it may seem, the ex- 
planation conceals a problem of some magnitude 
and complexity. 

To reach the core of the difficulty, it may be 
pointed out that the great rise in European popu- 
lation during the last century and a half is an 
altogether exceptional phenomenon. At its very 
beginning, this increase deeply impressed the 
minds of thoughtful contemporaries, and, among 
others, Malthus took up the problem, setting 
himself "to investigate the causes that have 
hitherto impeded the progress of mankind." The 
object of the present inquiry might almost be 
stated in the same terms, but Malthus, possibly 
with greater discretion, limited his field of re- 

[53] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
search to an investigation of the effects, in the 
case of man, of the constant tendency in all life 
to increase beyond the available means of sub- 
sistence. Of this tendency there can be little 
doubt, and, later on, Darwin took it for granted 
that organic beings may be regarded as striving 
to the utmost to increase in numbers. He pointed 
out that the progeny of a single pair of any spe- 
cies, if unhindered, would soon cover the earth, 
and Malthus estimated that, under favorable 
conditions, the human race might double itself 
four times in every hundred years. Manifestly, 
however, no such "natural increase" takes place, 
either among animals or men, and the crucial 
point in the investigations both of Malthus and 
of Darwin was the nature and effect of the 
"checks" by which population is limited. 

It was argued by Darwin that each organic 
being lives by a struggle at some period of its life, 
and, adopting the view expressed by Malthus 
that those who labor under any original weakness 
or infirmity would be the first to succumb, he 
arrived, by inverting the idea, at the conclusion 
that the survival of the fittest led eventually, not 
merely to a maintenance of the standard, but to 
the development of new species. As there has 

[54] 



GEOGRAPHICAL FACTOR 

been a marked disposition on the part of human- 
istic students to apply Darwin's hypothesis to the 
special case of man, it may be urged that Dar- 
win's adaptation of Malthus' ideas should not be 
permitted to supersede Malthus' contribution in 
its own field. And this particularly since, not- 
withstanding the common tendency of animal 
and human population to increase, the difference 
in the nature of the "checks" applied in the two 
cases is so marked as to make separate considera- 
tion imperative. Among animals, as Darwin saw, 
the struggle is a direct physical effort, and results 
in the elimination of individuals unable to bear 
their part; among human beings, as Malthus 
pointed out, actual want of food is, practically 
speaking, never the immediate check. Indeed, 
what we have to consider in the latter case is the 
means adopted for the prevention of increase, 
for in no human group has population been left 
to grow with perfect freedom or without inter- 
ference. The inquiry in the case of man must con- 
cern itself, then, with the results of means 
adopted, consciously or unconsciously, for the 
restriction of population ; and hence at the outset 
we are confronted with a substitution of ideas in 

[55] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

place of the physical processes represented in 
"natural selection." 

In beginning his examination of the influences 
which have retarded human advancement, 
Malthus set forth certain "propositions" which 
he regarded as axiomatic. First, he considered 
that "Population is necessarily limited by the 
means of subsistence," and, second, that "Popu- 
lation always increases where the means of sub- 
sistence increase." To the first of these an adden- 
dum might be offered, which, though by no 
means self-evident, is regarded by Bateson as 
axiomatic from the standpoint of the biologist. 
This may be stated in the form that, as popula- 
tion is necessarily limited by the means of sub- 
sistence, in normal stable conditions it remains 
stationary. Now it will readily appear that if 
this addendum is a true statement of the case, 
mere "natural increase" cannot be assigned as a 
reason for migration, and hence some other ex- 
planation must be sought to account for this 
phenomenon. It follows, therefore, that the na- 
ture of the arguments which may be advanced 
in support of the added "proposition" must be 
briefly indicated. 

The point to be brought out is that owing to the 

[56] 



GEOGRAPHICAL FACTOR 

restrictive measures employed, primitive groups 
do not multiply to such an extent that an over- 
flow of population takes place. Among animals, 
the individual arrives on the scene of life to ac- 
cept the chances of a struggle in which the more 
vigorous and fortunate have an advantage; 
among primitive peoples, on the other hand, a 
continuance of the life of the individual turns, in 
the first instance, upon the decision of older 
members of the group into which he is born, and 
the chances of survival are arbitrarily limited by 
the forethought, for their own well-being, of 
those upon whom the new arrival is dependent. 
Writing in the eighteenth century, Raynal called 
attention to "that multitude of singular institu- 
tions which retard the progress of population." 
To convey a clear impression of the extent to 
which the "natural increase" of early or lower 
groups was restricted, it would be necessary to 
consider each of these various practices; for the 
present purpose, however, it will be sufficient to 
take as an example the influence of infanticide. 

First, it should be observed that, in order to 
render population stationary, it would only be 
necessary that the restricting practices should af- 
fect a limited and variable surplus which would 

[57] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

remain after allowance had been made for the 
normal or average infant mortality of a given 
place and condition of life, and for the number 
actually necessary to maintain the full comple- 
ment of the group. This being the case, it is of 
importance to notice that infanticide, the killing 
of newborn infants, has been practised univer- 
sally throughout the world (until superseded in 
modern times by more remote methods for ac- 
complishing the same ends). 

It is not to be assumed that, in its earliest appli- 
cation, the practice of infanticide was inspired 
by any far-sighted concern for the food supply 
of later years. In its simplest form, the practice 
seems to have arisen from the readily appreci- 
able difficulty that a mother finds in caring for 
more than one infant at a time under primitive 
conditions of life. At a very early period, how- 
ever, it seems to have been definitely recognized 
that if all the children born were allowed to live 
there would not be food enough to support every- 
body. This truth, as has frequently been pointed 
out, would soon force itself upon the attention of 
islanders; and modern observers have reported 
that in certain islands from a half to two-thirds 
of all infants were killed at birth. When fore- 

[58] 



GEOGRAPHICAL FACTOR 

thought had once come to play a part, the prac- 
tice of infanticide seems to have assumed some 
fairly definite form, and to have come, in a meas- 
ure, under public surveillance. So while in one 
group the first or even the first two or three in- 
fants would be killed, in another all after the first 
three or four would be done away with. Twins, 
weakly children, those born on unlucky days or 
for whom the omens were inauspicious, children 
whose upper teeth came first, appear, in general, 
to have met with an untimely end. Before long 
the selection evidently came into close association 
with some conception of the needs of the group : 
Australian women are said, out of an average of 
six children, to rear as a rule two boys and a girl, 
and practically everywhere the ratio of boys and 
girls is a matter of special concern. 

Owing to the interest excited by M'Lennan's 
theory of the origin of exogamy, the question of 
the prevalence of female infanticide has to a 
great extent overshadowed the more general 
problem. Here it may be observed that male in- 
fanticide seems to stand in the same relation to 
mother-rite groups that female infanticide does 
to patriarchal groups. In the former, since de- 
scent passes through the female side, girls are 

[59] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

preferred, and boys are less desirable; while, in 
the latter case, the conditions are reversed. So, 
too, where daughters could be sold for a good 
price to husbands, they would be valued, but 
where a dower had to be given they would be 
looked upon as a source of loss. Conversely, with 
the introduction of the custom of tracing descent 
through males, boys were preferred, more espe- 
cially because the dead were dependent upon 
heirs-male for the sacrifices associated with 
ancestor- worship. 

If the influence of infanticide in restricting 
numbers is to be fully appreciated, it must be 
understood that the practice was not a mere mat- 
ter of individual caprice, but was commonly re- 
garded as a public concern of moment to the 
group as a whole. The decision was not by any 
means universally left to the parents, and in some 
places the carrying out of the sentence was en- 
trusted to professional practitioners. The most 
important aspect of the case, however, is that the 
infant had no standing in the group into which it 
was born — was veritably "a little stranger" — 
until it had been formally accepted into the kin. 
As van Gennep has pointed out, the attitude of 
the group towards the infant was one of self- 

[60] 



GEOGRAPHICAL FACTOR 

defence, and it was necessary that the newcomer 
should undergo purification, and remain for a 
period in a state of probation, before the rite of 
admission was celebrated. Very generally, it 
would appear, the child was submitted to more 
or less public inspection, and the rite of accept- 
ance was performed by the headman of the vil- 
lage or the head of the family group. At Athens 
the decision seems, primitively, to have been ar- 
rived at by a family council; later, the father 
made official announcement before the altar of 
Hestia as to whether the child was to be accepted 
or abandoned ; finally, it would seem, the official 
ceremony was confined to acceptance — failure to 
celebrate the birth was tantamount to rejection. 

Clearly, then, the practice of infanticide alone 
must have gone far towards limiting the numbers 
of earlier groups and rendering population sta- 
tionary, and it must not be overlooked that this is 
but one of a number of such practices. That these 
methods of keeping population within bounds 
were effective may, furthermore, be inferred 
from the stability of the boundaries between dif- 
ferent primitive groups, and from the wide- 
spread evidences of a persistent attitude of hos- 
tility towards strangers. The boundaries of tribal 

[61] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

territory, as Grierson has shown, are, in general, 
clearly defined, not merely by the natural land- 
marks of rivers, lakes, forests, and mountains, 
but even by artificial monuments. The borders 
are jealously defended, and, being on either side 
placed under the protection of supernatural 
powers who are believed to take upon themselves 
the punishment of venturesome intruders, are 
not violated without trepidation. Indeed, beyond 
the group boundary, the world was necessarily 
full of menace, for, among all lower peoples, the 
stranger was feared and treated as an enemy, and 
the relation between stranger-groups was one of 
persistent hostility. So, while Holsti has shown 
conclusively that primitive warfare consisted 
more of shouting and terrifying than of fighting 
with intent to kill, it is not to be assumed that the 
hostility was factitious ; and the fact that peace- 
ful intercourse between neighboring groups was 
limited in the extreme is shown by the custom of 
the "silent trade." Singular as it may appear, in 
this mode of bartering, traces of which are still 
to be found in every quarter of the globe, the 
traffickers not only do not address, but do not 
even see one another. The silent trade is simply 
a means by which enemies may mutually ex- 

[62] 



GEOGRAPHICAL FACTOR 
change goods, and at the same time remain in 
safety; "they, indeed, keep faith with one an- 
other, but in so doing they are actuated, not by 
any feeling of amity, but wholly by the wish to 
serve their own interests." 

It cannot be asserted that the addendum offered 
to the first proposition of Malthus has the same 
axiomatic character as the statement that "Popu- 
lation is necessarily limited by the means of sub- 
sistence" ; nor can it be demonstrated from statis- 
tics that "in normal stable conditions population 
remains stationary" ; nevertheless, it may now be 
urged that there are weighty considerations 
which tend to substantiate such a conclusion. So, 
as the longevity of the savage is less than that of 
civilized man, and as the conditions of savage 
life undoubtedly have an appreciable influence 
upon fecundity, the prevalence of such customs 
as infanticide, not to speak of the influence of 
various forms of marriage, must have made any- 
thing like rapid increase of population impos- 
sible. Furthermore, all we know of the habits of 
lower groups, more particularly their dread of 
strange places and strange people, tends to con- 
firm the view that such groups have long re- 
mained practically stationary in numbers. Fi- 

[6 3 ] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

nally, Keane points out that most African negroes 
south of the equator, most Oceanic negroes 
(Melanesians and Papuans), all Australian and 
American aborigines have remained in their 
original habitats ever since what may be called 
the first settlement of the earth by man; and, 
after an exhaustive inquiry, Willcox arrives at 
the conclusion that where the influence of Eu- 
rope has not been deeply felt, notably in China, 
and in Japan before its opening to Western in- 
fluence, population has been nearly or quite sta- 
tionary or has actually decreased. 

4. Presuming, then, that population in normal 
stable conditions remains stationary, that among 
primitive peoples there is no "natural increase" 
which would lead inevitably to migrations, it be- 
comes pertinent to inquire how movements of 
peoples have been brought about. 

This suggests the second proposition of Mal- 
thus, that "Population always increases where 
the means of subsistence increase." If this be true, 
then, obviously, its converse must be true, and 
population will decrease when the means of sub- 
sistence diminish. The initial point for consider- 
ation, it will thus be seen, is not so much the rise 
and fall of numbers as the increase and decrease 

[64] 



GEOGRAPHICAL FACTOR 

of the food supply. Unfortunately, Malthus took 
up the case of diminution of numbers, not in rela- 
tion to contraction of food supply, but merely as 
illustrating the recuperative power of popula- 
tion after such visitations as plague, pestilence, 
and famine. The direction of his interest led him 
to concern himself primarily with the mode by 
which subsistence is increased, and so he points 
out that population multiplies rapidly when, in 
new colonies, the knowledge and industry of an 
old state are applied to the unappropriated land 
of a new country. The most notable rise in popu- 
lation of which we have historical knowledge 
has followed upon modern improvements in 
agricultural methods, whether in old countries 
or in new. We may say, in short, that increase of 
population, in modern times, follows upon in- 
creased production of food. 

It must now be observed that while increase of 
the food supply will permit more people to live 
upon the same area, there is no reason to suppose 
that this increase will lead to migration. And 
accepting the fact that we know of no period at 
which the earth was not filled up to the limit of 
existing conditions — Keane dates the complete 
occupation of the globe by man in the early pleis- 

[65] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

tocene epoch — and assuming, from what has 
been said, that any local advance would simply 
mean that a greater number would be supported 
on a given territory, we are still left without a 
clue to the explanation of the movements of peo- 
ples. If, however, we turn to consider, not the 
effect of an increase of the means of subsistence, 
but the effect of a decrease, the difficulty will, I 
think, be seen to disappear. If, briefly, it can be 
shown that populations have actually been driven 
forth in consequence of a shrinkage of food sup- 
ply due to a lessening of the productivity of the 
land, a satisfactory explanation would be pro- 
vided for the historical movements of peoples. 
While the productivity of the land is increased 
by human activity, it may also be affected inju- 
riously by the same means. Population shifts, for 
example, when the methods employed have led 
to the working out of the soil, leaving as a me- 
morial "the abandoned farm." So, too, popula- 
tion has declined in more than one area when an 
invasion has been followed by a lapse to inferior 
methods of cultivation, as in the Euphrates- 
Tigris valley; or when, as in the Turkish do- 
minions, forms of taxation have been introduced 
which bear with undue severity upon the agri- 

[66] 



GEOGRAPHICAL FACTOR 

cultural class. It is obvious, however, that these 
cases are incidental to a relatively advanced civil- 
ization, and cannot be utilized to throw light 
upon earlier situations. 
What would appear to be a simple illustration 
of food shrinkage, with its accompanying results, 
is provided by Livy when he states that in Gaul, 
in the time of Ambigatus, whoever he may have 
been, a succession of abundant harvests led to a 
rapid increase in numbers, and that subsequently, 
to relieve the country from the burden of over- 
population, a considerable body was sent out to 
seek a new home. Paulus Diaconus relates that 
the same experiment was resorted to by the 
Langobardi, who, he says, divided their whole 
group into three parts, and determined by lot 
which part should go forth. Machiavelli, im- 
proving upon this, regards the increase as con- 
stant, and the method of division and emigration 
as an established custom. He seems, like many 
later writers, to have been impressed by Paul's 
explanation that the North, being colder than 
the South, is more healthy, and better fitted for 
the propagation of nations. He thought, indeed, 
that the whole country was called "Germania" 
because such great multitudes sprang up there, a 

[ 6 7 ] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
theory which evidently takes its rise in the ety- 
mology of Isodore, who imagined that the word 
"Germany" was derived from "germinare"; the 
same idea is represented in Jordanes, who traces 
the Goths to this "hive of races or womb of na- 
tions." While Malthus was inclined to follow 
Paul and Machiavelli, Gibbon doubted the regu- 
larity of these outpourings, and we can now see 
that the entire series of explanations, from Livy 
down, is simply an effort to account for the one 
known fact that migrations occur. Modern schol- 
ars, like Chadwick, prefer to attribute the move- 
ments in question to pressure from behind rather 
than to the effects of sporadic cases of over- 
population. 

Climate is everywhere variable, and wet spells 
succeed dry spells in a halting rhythm. Good 
seasons may possibly stimulate population, but, 
after all, sporadic influences of this sort are not 
likely to have changed the face of the world by 
inaugurating the great migrations known to his- 
tory as "the wandering of the peoples." A more 
significant effect may be attributed to a succes- 
sion of bad seasons, particularly when these take 
the form of long-continued droughts. To observe 
the full effect of such occurrences it is necessary 

[68] 



GEOGRAPHICAL FACTOR 

to turn from Europe to Asia. Thus in the North- 
western Provinces of India, the meeting-point of 
the two great rain currents, scarcity of moisture 
is frequent, and from time to time the autumn 
rains fail completely. Then famine ensues, and 
the stricken people, to escape destruction, move 
blindly "in the direction of Malwa, that Cathay 
or land of plenty, where, in the imagination of 
the North Indian rustic, the fields always smile 
with golden grain and poverty is unknown." So, 
too, in southern India the inhabitants, similarly 
impelled, have been known to travel in thou- 
sands towards the distant hills. Here then is a 
force strong enough to overcome the most deeply 
ingrained immobility, and to break down even 
the strongest barriers of caste. Nevertheless, it is 
difficult to discover in an exodus of disorganized 
and starving beings more than a semblance of 
those movements which have played so conspicu- 
ous a part in the history of man. If, however, we 
consider the conditions existing in Central Asia, 
other important factors will be found to present 
themselves. 

Since the end of the eighteenth century the idea 
has been widely entertained by linguistic schol- 
ars that the distribution of languages in Europe 

[6 9 ] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

is best to be explained on the hypothesis of a se- 
ries of migrations of peoples from Central Asia. 
While the literature of this discussion is extraor- 
dinarily extensive, there does not appear to have 
been any concerted effort on the part of philolo- 
gists to inquire into the origin of migrations, 
though as early as 1820 passages from the Zend- 
Avesta had been cited to show that a sudden low- 
ering of temperature in northern Asia (attribu- 
ted later to the coming of the Ice Age in Siberia) 
had compelled the population to seek a warmer 
habitat. On this basis, seemingly, the phrase 
"climatic change" has retained its place without 
substantiation from direct investigation. A new 
view of the matter was introduced in 1892 when 
James Bryce, discussing the origin of migrations, 
pointed out that "a succession of dry seasons, 
which may merely diminish the harvest of those 
who inhabit tolerably humid regions, will pro- 
duce such a famine in the inner parts of a conti- 
nent like Asia as to force the people to seek some 
better dwelling-place." It was not, however, until 
the narratives of recent explorers like Sven 
Hedin and Aurel Stein, at the opening of the 
twentieth century, had called attention anew to 
the presence of sand-buried ruins in Central Asia 

[70] 



GEOGRAPHICAL FACTOR 

that the underlying problem was vigorously at- 
tacked, and, this time, by geographers. 
The active discussion of the origin of the migra- 
tions from Central Asia may be said to have been 
inaugurated in 1904 by two memorable papers 
in the Geographical Journal. In the earlier of 
these, Mackinder laid emphasis, first, upon the 
aridity of the heart of the Eurasian land-mass, 
its system of internal drainage, and the fact that 
it is not a continuous desert like the Sahara, but 
a steppe-land with alternations of desert areas 
and river-fed oases. Secondly, he pointed to the 
mobility of its horse-riding inhabitants — a fac- 
tor which has also been dwelt upon by Demolins 
and Vidal de la Blache. In the discussion which 
followed, Holdich raised the question of the rea- 
son for the overflow of peoples from Central 
Asia, and was emphatic in his opinion that one of 
the great compelling reasons for all these migra- 
tions had been a distinct alteration in the physical 
conditions of the country. It is of some interest to 
notice, as showing the views held so recently as a 
decade ago, that Mackinder, in reply, considered 
that when you had the evidence of this constant 
succession of descents, it was quite unnecessary to 
ask for any explanation of it. 

'[71] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

In the later paper, Prince Kropotkin developed 
the theory, on a broad geological foundation, 
that Central Asia is in a state of rapid desicca- 
tion ; and, adverting to the existing evidences of 
a greater population in times past, stated the 
theory that "it must have been the rapid desicca- 
tion of this region which compelled its inhabi- 
tants to rush down to the Jungarian Gate, down 
to the lowlands of the Balkash and the Obi, and 
thence pushing before them the original inhabi- 
tants of the lowlands, to produce those great mi- 
grations and invasions of Europe which took 
place during the first centuries of our era." Here 
again the discussion brought out important con- 
siderations. Mackinder, while accepting Kropot- 
kin's general contention, thought that there was 
a tendency to exaggerate the rapidity of the des- 
iccation during the historical period; he was in- 
clined to doubt that the invasions of Europe had 
originated in desiccation, but accepted Hedin's 
conclusion that the shifting of sand by the wind 
had frequently brought catastrophe to human set- 
tlements. Freshfield, citing various climatolo- 
gists, was convinced that oscillation, not desicca- 
tion, in climate was what all the records pointed 
to. Mill called attention to the constancy of the 

[72] 



GEOGRAPHICAL FACTOR 

total rainfall during historical time, and ex- 
pressed the opinion that there was a drying-up of 
the plateau regions of all the continents, compen- 
sated for by an increase of precipitation else- 
where. Evans insisted that the general question 
of the desiccation of the globe should be kept dis- 
tinct from that of the drying-up of Central Asia, 
and pointed to recent changes in the physical 
geography of the latter region which rendered 
inevitable the desiccation of the country. The 
whole problem was thus opened up, with an evi- 
dent consensus of opinion that some change, con- 
tinuous or fluctuating, had taken place in the cli- 
mate of Central Asia. At the end of a decade, 
during which the question of desiccation was 
warmly debated, Gregory presented an exhaust- 
ive review of the opinions embodied in the litera- 
ture. From this it would appear that the co- 
operation of geologists and geographers had 
been able to reach no more definite result than 
that as an increased rainfall had been demon- 
strated for many parts of the world, there was a 
predisposition in favor of a compensating de- 
crease in Central Asia, though the conflict of 
opinion on this point might be explained on the 

[73] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

hypothesis that the desert is widening in some 
places and contracting in others. 
Now it must be evident that if the discussion of 
the relation of change of climate to migration is 
not to remain permanently (like its philological 
counterpart) on the basis of the advocacy of per- 
sonal views, actual investigation of the archaeo- 
logical evidence must be carried out upon the 
ground, for in this way only may direct proof be 
obtained. It is to the high credit of Raphael 
Pumpelly that he envisaged the problem in this 
way; and it is fortunate that grants from the 
Carnegie Institution made possible two expedi- 
tions to Turkestan, in 1903 and 1904, under his 
direction. It should be understood that these ex- 
peditions were organized, and the grants made, 
for the specific purpose of investigating the 
theory that the great civilizations of the East and 
West had their origins in Central Asia, and of 
examining the evidence for the supposed occur- 
rence of changes of climate in the same region. 
The results arrived at in regard to these ques- 
tions, therefore, were not by-products of some 
other undertaking, and are further guaranteed 
by the fact that the work was carried on by a se- 
lected group of specialists. (It may be noted that 

[74] 



GEOGRAPHICAL FACTOR 

Ellsworth Huntington, whose Pulse of Asia has 
enjoyed a wide popularity, was an assistant on 
the two expeditions.) In the present connection 
it is unnecessary to enter into detail in regard to 
Pumpelly's successes ; what is of importance here 
is the fact that evidence was accumulated to show 
that, in Turkestan, organized town life, with 
agriculture and the breeding of animals, goes 
back for many thousands of years before the 
Christian era, and that after these investigations 
no doubt remains that the inhabitants of the sites 
explored had been repeatedly driven forth by 
destructive changes of climate. 

Population, then, is limited, in any given habi- 
tat, by the means of subsistence ; it remains sta- 
tionary in normal stable conditions, but may in- 
crease without disturbing the equilibrium if the 
food supply be increased through improvements 
in the methods of production. On the other hand, 
the inhabitants of a given area will be forced out 
when, through the operation of natural agencies, 
such as a diminution of rainfall, the means of 
subsistence decrease, and from this compulsory 
movement ensue migrations. Clearly, therefore, 
it is unnecessary to assume that among certain 
groups population has been permitted to grow 

[75] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

without restraint, or to imagine some "mighty 
hive" from which nations have emerged in 
"swarms," or to suppose the existence of specifi- 
cally "restless" peoples. It is of some interest to 
recollect, at this point, that any disturbance of 
conditions will manifest itself in an increase of 
population, and it can scarcely be doubted that 
migratory movements lead to the multiplication 
of population, instead of being the product of 
overpopulation in an established community. 
Finally, migrations are not to be attributed to a 
spirit of enterprise; peoples do not wander forth 
seeking for they know not what. We cannot as- 
sume in groups long fixed in habitat and ideas the 
sudden desire for booty, or freedom, or glory, or 
for "something unattainable." Nor may we ac- 
cept the hypothesis that man is primarily a mi- 
gratory, restless being, and that his fossilization 
ensues only when he is temporarily debarred 
from pursuing his natural impulses, and is 
brought to a standstill. Man is prone to remain 
where he is, to fixity in ideas and in ways of doing 
things, and only through nature's insistent driv- 
ing has he been shaken out of his immobility and 
set wayfaring upon the open road. 
5. So far, then, it has been shown that political 

[76] 



GEOGRAPHICAL FACTOR 

units have arisen at certain definitely circum- 
scribed places. These places have not been con- 
sciously selected or decided upon by men, but 
have been determined by the conformation of the 
earth's surface, that is, by the localization of 
habitable areas and the possibilities of travel. 
The common element to be observed in all cases 
is that the places where political organizations 
have come into being have been points of pres- 
sure; they have not merely been lands upon 
which one group after another might have set 
covetous eyes, but have been the termini of routes 
which, of necessity, have been followed by suc- 
cessive migrant groups. The dependence of man 
upon his physical surroundings, thus exhibited, 
is made even clearer when it is observed that the 
human movements which lead eventually to the 
beginning of political organization have had 
their origin, not in man's foresight or planning, 
or as a result of the "automatic increase" of popu- 
lation, but in changes of climate within a definite 
area. 

If, now, we accept this statement of the depend- 
ence of man upon his physical surroundings, it 
obviously becomes necessary to inquire how mi- 
grations have operated to bring political organi- 

[77] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

zations into existence. This inquiry will have the 
additional advantage of showing the uniform 
dependence of history upon a second set of natu- 
ral factors, namely, the fundamental character- 
istics of man himself. 



[78] 



Ill 

THE HUMAN FACTOR IN HISTORY 

i. Political organization is a comparatively 
recent phenomenon which has made its appear- 
ance among men in certain restricted places at 
definite moments in time, and has spread but 
slowly from different points of origin. This fact 
has hitherto had little significance for the histo- 
rian, for, owing to his preoccupation with the 
study of documents, he has been more interested 
in questioning the credibility of ancient narra- 
tives than in examining the antecedent conditions 
from which, in all cases, political units have 
sprung. When, however, the matter is explicitly 
brought up, it is evident that political organiza- 
tion is an exceptional thing, characteristic only 
of certain groups, and that all peoples whatso- 
ever have once been or still are organized on a 
different basis. Furthermore, it is also evident 
that political organization has been but imper- 
fectly extended over the population of the areas 
where it is dominant, and, consequently, that 

[79] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
"survivals" of the earlier regime are to be found 
even in the most highly developed countries. It 
will, therefore, be seen that the examination of 
the problem presented by the emergence of po- 
litical organization is essential to an understand- 
ing of how man has come to be as he is, and that 
the uniformity of origin exhibited in this emer- 
gence is a further justification for maintaining 
the fundamental homogeneity of history. 

If we compare "primitive" and "civilized" 
groups of men as we find them in the world 
today, almost the first point of difference that 
will strike the observer is that, among the former, 
the individual identifies himself by particular- 
izing his blood-relationships, whereas, in the 
latter, the individual defines his status in terms 
of relation to a given territory. For example, 
"the Saxons brought with them across the Nar- 
row Seas an organization according to families, 
hundreds, and tribes, dependent, that is to say, on 
blood-relationship. But the settlement of these 
units in the conquered land gave rise to the later 
parishes, hundreds, and counties. Gradually the 
idea of domicile replaced that of clan as the prin- 
ciple of social order, and whereas the family, or 
the hundred of families were formerly respon- 

[80] 



THE HUMAN FACTOR 

sible for the malefactor, the modern police have 
power of arrest within clearly defined county or 
municipal areas. Thus, while in later history the 
physical features of the country are in some ways 
less coercive, administrative divisions have 
grown more precise, and have become more con- 
stant elements in the machinery of government." 

This striking difference seems first to have been 
emphasized, in 1861, by Sir Henry Maine, and 
was dealt with, later, from the point of view of 
the anthropologist, by Lewis Henry Morgan. 

Archaic law, Maine remarks, "is full, in all its 
provinces, of the clearest indications that society 
in primitive times was not what it is assumed to 
be at present, a collection of individuals. In fact, 
and in the view of the men who composed it, it 
was an aggregation of families." If, then, kin- 
ship in blood is the original basis of organization, 
there is no revolution known to us, he continues, 
"so startling and so complete as the change which 
is accomplished when some other principle — 
such as that, for instance, of local contiguity — 
established itself for the first time as the basis of 
common political action." "The idea that a num- 
ber of persons should exercise political rights in 
common simply because they happened to live 

[81] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

within the same topographical limits was utterly- 
strange and monstrous to primitive antiquity." 
"The most recent researches into the primitive 
history of society," he says in a later book, "point 
to the conclusion that the earliest tie which 
knitted men together in communities was con- 
sanguinity or kinship." "We have next to con- 
sider the epoch, reached at some time by all the 
portions of mankind destined to civilization, at 
which . . . the land begins to be the basis of 
society in place of kinship. The change is ex- 
tremely gradual, and in some particulars it has 
not even now been fully accomplished, but it has 
been going on through the whole course of his- 
tory. The constitution of the family through 
actual blood-relationship is of course an observ- 
able fact, but, for all groups of men larger than 
the family, the land on which they live tends to 
become the bond of union between them, at the 
expense of kinship, ever more and more vaguely 
conceived." 

Morgan, after describing the earlier form of 
organization, goes on to say that the later form is 
"founded upon territory and upon property, and 
may be distinguished as a state (civitas). The 
township or ward, circumscribed by metes and 

[82] 



THE HUMAN FACTOR 

bounds, with the property it contains, is the basis 
or unit of the latter, and political society is the 
result. Political society is organized upon terri- 
torial areas, and deals with property as well as 
with persons through territorial relations. . . . 
In ancient society this territorial plan was un- 
known. When it came it fixed the boundary line 
between ancient and modern society." 

Now, while the forms and problems presented 
by the facts of kindred organization are repre- 
sented in anthropology by an extensive literature, 
and while the forms and problems of political 
organization have been described and discussed 
by all the generations of historians and political 
theorists from Herodotus and Aristotle to the 
present day, I am unaware of any sustained ef- 
fort that has been made to investigate the transi- 
tion from the one to the other by comparison of 
all the available data. The question of the rela- 
tions of the different types of kindred organiza- 
tion forms one of the major interests of anthro- 
pology; on the other hand, it is with the expe- 
rience of men under the conditions of the new 
organization that History, in the accepted mean- 
ing of the term, deals, and it must be apparent 
now that the only satisfactory approach to the 

[ 8 3 ] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

study of History will lie through the investiga- 
tion of the phenomena of transition wherever this 
may have taken place. But while the transition 
has not yet been made the subject of extended 
research, there is one fact at least which stands 
out with such distinctness that it may be utilized, 
at once to exhibit the homogeneity of history, and 
to reveal the source of the most notable charac- 
teristics of modern life. 

2. To observe this fact in its proper setting, it is 
necessary to see that, while the distinction be- 
tween kindred and political units may readily be 
defined, the description of the difference does not 
explain how the later condition sprang from the 
earlier. In other words, there is some step or 
process involved in the transition which neither 
Maine nor Morgan has brought to light. 

To comprehend the situation fully, we may 
begin by saying that kindred organization, in 
whatever form it may assume, reflects the natural 
facts of human generation. What follows imme- 
diately from this is a commonplace of the study 
of primitive man which must be constantly borne 
in mind, for kindred organization implies the 
unquestioned and unremitting dominance of the 
group over the individual, and this leads to the 

[8 4 ] 



THE HUMAN FACTOR 

tenacious and uncompromising maintenance of 
customary ways and ideas. It will thus be seen 
that the despotism of custom negatives the idea 
that kindred organization could have been given 
up voluntarily, or exchanged, after deliberation, 
for something invented or considered better. The 
change, as I have pointed out, has been forced 
upon men at certain geographical points, deter- 
mined by the physical distribution of land and 
water, and by a series of exigencies which go 
back to specific changes in climate within a defi- 
nite area of the earth's surface. Furthermore, the 
immediate occasion of the break-up of kindred 
groups has been the collision and conflict, at the 
termini of routes, which have ensued from the 
migrations of men; and apparently it has re- 
quired repeated, loqg-sustained, and bitter con- 
flict, such indeed as Gilbert Murray has depicted 
in The Rise of the Greek Epic, to overcome, even 
in a limited degree, the adherence of such groups 
to old customs, old ways of doing things, and old 
ideas. Wherever political organizations have 
come into existence these conflicts have taken 
place, so that there is a direct historical relation 
between war and this particular step in human 
advancement. 

[85] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

Now, there is a strong temptation to turn aside 
here, under the guidance, let us say, of Chad- 
wick's Heroic Age, and dwell upon the story of 
these struggles, dimly conveyed to us through 
the alluring haze of epic poetry, but it is essen- 
tial, in the present connection, to keep clearly 
before us what it is that, in these cases, war has 
destroyed. The cardinal point is that the conflict, 
in breaking up the older organization, liberated 
the individual man, if but for a moment, from 
the dominance of the group, its observances, its 
formulae, and its ideas. Briefly, a situation was 
created in which the old rites and ceremonies 
could not be performed, one in which the old 
rules of action were manifestly inadequate, and 
hence one in which the individual became, in 
some measure, a law unto himself. This, at bot- 
tom, is the fact upon which all history turns. 

It is difficult for the modern man to realize that, 
in the earlier period, individuality did not exist; 
that the unit was not the single life, but the 
group; and that this was the embodiment of a 
relatively fixed system, from which escape was 
normally impossible. So completely was the indi- 
vidual subordinated to the community that art 
was just the repetition of tribal designs, literature 

[86] 



THE HUMAN FACTOR 

the repetition of tribal songs, and religion the 
repetition of tribal rites. Conversely, the break- 
up which resulted from the ultimate conflict of 
alien groups had, as its most essential feature, the 
release of personal initiative, the creation of per- 
sonal responsibility, and the recognition of per- 
sonal worth and individuality. These appear in 
actual life under the form of individual self- 
assertion, which, in all later developments, re- 
mains a significant phenomenon. And here, par- 
enthetically, it may be pointed out that we accept 
readily enough as characteristic of the transition 
epoch the spirit of boasting which pervades the 
literature of such periods, and we set down as the 
all-pervading motive of action the hunger to win 
personal glory, but when we come to the discus- 
sion of our own times we show no disposition to 
analyze the conventions that now define the ave- 
nues through which the same spirit may find out- 
let, nor do we seek to discover the means by 
which this spirit is kept in check under modern 
conditions, nor the relation that its expression 
bears to opportunity. Needless to say the question 
has never been taken up as to the delimitation of 
the channels through which self-assertion might 
properly realize itself in desirable activities. 

[87] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

We are now in a position to see that the release 
of individual self-assertion through the tempo- 
rary overthrow of the domination of customary 
restraints has been the necessary prelude to the 
emergence of territorial organization and the 
institution of personal ownership. However far 
apart these two elements may appear to be in 
modern life, in the beginning they are identical, 
for the fundamental characteristic of political 
organization is the attitude of personal owner- 
ship assumed by the ruler towards the land and 
the population over which he has gained con- 
trol — an attitude expressed to this day in the 
phrases "my army" and "my people." What we 
have uniformly at the beginning of the historical 
period in different lands is the assumption of 
sovereign ownership by an individual leader or 
king who relies upon the aid of a military group, 
caste, or aristocracy to hold in subjection a sub- 
ordinate population of which little is heard ; and 
later History is, primarily, the record of the un- 
ceasing efforts of kings to extend what they re- 
gard as their personal possessions. Even today, 
the most advanced political theory (of German 
origin, naturally) accepts the view that the state 
is an institution imposed by a victorious group 

[88] 



THE HUMAN FACTOR 

upon those whom it has conquered, with the 
single object of regulating the authority of the 
victor over the vanquished, and guarding against 
internal rebellion and external assault. Ruler- 
ship, in this view, has no further purpose than 
the economic exploitation of the conquered by 
the conquerors. 
The crucial point to be observed here is that 
kingship and territorial organization represent 
simply the institutionalization of a situation 
which arose out of the opportunity for personal 
self-assertion created by the break-up of primi- 
tive organizations. And it should be understood 
that just as the relative stability of the older units 
follows from the fact that every human being is 
born into a given group and becomes assimilated 
to this in speech, manners, and ideas, so, in the 
new organization, the status quo operates to per- 
petuate itself, and the mere fact of its existence 
becomes an argument for regarding it as ordained 
by some super-mundane power. Thus, through- 
out the past, we are presented with the anomaly 
of men fighting to maintain the institutionalized 
vestiges of the self-assertion of aggressive indi- 
viduals on occasions of long-past upheavals. On 
the other hand, it must also be observed that — 

[89] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

under conditions which it is of paramount im- 
portance for the historian to make clear — the 
spirit of self-assertion has arisen from time to 
time in the subordinate elements of composite 
groups. Indeed, what we ordinarily designate 
"constitutional history" is largely occupied with 
the efforts put forth by one or another element, 
class, or order included within a political group 
to contest the dominance of a ruling minority, 
and the theory of sovereign ownership. From 
this internal contest has arisen the theory of indi- 
vidual "rights" (of which perhaps the most fun- 
damental is that of preventing other people from 
interfering with a man's use of his own prop- 
erty), and the theory that political authorities 
may be tested and reformed in accordance with 
current ideas. But, while these matters constitute 
the marrow of history, we must leave them here 
to concern ourselves more particularly with 
other, less generally recognized, results of the 
initial self-assertion. 

3. The object we have in view is to discover, if 
possible, how man everywhere has come to be as 
he is. From what has been said it will appear that 
this involves a consideration of the facts of 
"transition" and "release," and a vivid realiza- 

[90] 



THE HUMAN FACTOR 

tion that these phenomena have made their ap- 
pearance only at certain geographical points and 
at certain moments of time. It has been shown al- 
ready that political organizations have arisen at 
points definitely localized and determined by the 
physical features of the earth's surface, and it 
follows explicitly that the release of the indi- 
vidual from the dominance of the group, and the 
stimulus and opportunity necessary for the emer- 
gence of individual initiative and self-assertion 
have been similarly restricted. Hence we arrive 
at an aspect of the case which is of fundamental 
importance for an understanding of the present 
condition of mankind, namely, that individual- 
ization, and the politicization of groups has 
never been other than irregular and incomplete. 
The origin of this irregularity is, simply, that 
pressure and conflict, coming at specific points, 
have never been evenly distributed geographi- 
cally; and the break-up of kindred organization, 
never having been designed, has never been fully 
and deliberately carried out. Of necessity, some 
lands and some people, being nearer the imme- 
diate seat of conflict, have been more deeply in- 
volved in the struggle, and hence more .com- 
pletely exposed to the disturbing influences. Of 

[91] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
necessity, too, release, being ultimately personal, 
has opened different paths of opportunity to dif- 
ferent members of the community. 

The manifestations of the irregularity have 
been of the most varied character. Within the 
groups primarily affected, for example, the 
breakdown of the old organization has not been 
accompanied by the revelation of any "best pos- 
sible" substitute, and so, in the stress of emer- 
gency, the old forms are made over to do service 
as best they may, new forms are called by old 
names, and new ideas masquerade in faded habil- 
iments. Furthermore, when the turmoil begins 
to subside, the lately disturbed groups, as readily 
as their forefathers, turn to impose their newly 
acquired modes of thought and action upon the 
rising generations, and hence the arrangements 
of a given moment are perpetuated indefinitely. 

Outside the original political group, again, the 
influences of the upheaval spread, as from a 
center, in ever widening and diminishing waves. 
To observe the results of this extension, it is 
necessary to make a distinction which, I think, 
has not hitherto been observed. If, avoiding the 
complexity of the situation presented in the 
countries ordinarily included in "ancient" his- 

[92] 



THE HUMAN FACTOR 

tory, we turn our attention to China and India, 
it will be seen that a political organization comes 
into being in the midst of non-political commu- 
nities. Typically, the new political unit may be 
regarded as maintaining contact with tribal or 
kindred organizations on two frontages, and the 
distinction to be made arises from differences in 
the activities which follow from the conditions 
in the two cases. It has already been pointed out 
that, in China and India, political units make 
their appearance just within the exposed fron- 
tier; the result of this is that the new organiza- 
tion has behind it, rearwards, an extensive coun- 
try with a quiescent population grouped on the 
old lines, and, in front, outwards, similar groups, 
subject, however, to perennial uneasiness and 
disturbance. From this situation there arise two 
different types of activity on the part of the 
middle group — and it is not without significance 
that in other countries besides China there has 
been a recognized "middle kingdom." 

If, then, we consider the relations of the politi- 
cal unit towards the "native" population in its 
rear (avoiding the error of identifying an asser- 
tion of territorial dominion with the politiciza- 
tion of a population), it will readily become ap- 

[93] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

parent that there is practically no case on record 
in which this population has been wholly in- 
corporated into the political organization, or in 
which the kindred organization has been com- 
pletely broken down. This condition is manifest 
in China and India, but the statement holds true 
equally of Great Britain, and is conspicuous in 
the New World. The occasion of this unequal 
politicization of geographically protected peo- 
ples may be traced to the aggression or self- 
assertion of small bodies of men, representing 
individuals who have not submitted themselves 
to the process of re-stabilization in the political 
organization. It has been usual to classify these 
men, somewhat invidiously, as "adventurers," 
but in reality they are individuals for whose 
awakened initiative and desire for purposive 
action the new arrangement provides no ade- 
quate opportunity. It is the case, everywhere and 
in all times, of "The man who would be king" : — 
"we will go away to some other place where a 
man isn't crowded and can come to his own." 
So, in India, the Aryan settlement of the Punjab 
was followed by the rise of small Aryan king- 
doms in the neighboring Ganges valley, and the 
footsteps of the adventurers may even be traced, 

[94] 



THE HUMAN FACTOR 

still farther south, in the Deccan. Precisely the 
same course of action is to be seen in China, and 
is exemplified, frequently, in later times, in the 
colonial expansion of European peoples. 
Turning next to the policy of the "middle" 
kingdom in regard to the outward or frontier 
groups, a wholly different situation comes into 
view, for, in this case, the aggression or pressure 
is directed against the central political organiza- 
tion, and not exerted by it. What is here to be 
considered primarily is the means of defence 
adopted by the political unit against migrant in- 
vaders. In ancient times, it would seem that one 
of the earliest expedients for protecting the ex- 
posed frontier was the wall, and the barrier 
erected by the Chinese is but one instance of a 
practice which has been followed throughout 
Asia and Europe. On the other hand, it was dis- 
covered at a remote period, for example, by the 
Chinese under the Han dynasty, that a more 
effective defence of the land might be provided 
by a military occupation and control of the 
frontier territory lying beyond the actual bound- 
ary of the organized political unit; and thence- 
forward the Chinese government has followed 
the policy of maintaining its hold upon the prov- 

[95] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

inces of Mongolia and Sin Kiang. In this pro- 
cedure we have an example of a strategic policy 
which has played a most significant part in the 
history of the world, and is even now a subject of 
debate in every "foreign office" on the globe. It 
is of interest to observe that the Romans should 
have relied, in general, upon the earlier expe- 
dient of the wall, with its accompaniment of a 
march or "no man's land" in front. But after the 
long series of barbarian invasions which brought 
about the disruption of the Western Empire, the 
newer political organizations which arose upon 
its foundations adopted the later Chinese policy 
and erected for defensive purposes, across Cen- 
tral Europe, that series of marken — frontier 
provinces under military control — from which 
have sprung the German and Austrian govern- 
ments of the present day. 

Clearly, then, the extent of the influence exerted 
by the "middle" kingdom, and its central politi- 
cal organization, will differ radically in each of 
these typical cases ; and we may see, in brief, that 
the present condition of the great contrasting 
groups of East and West, of China and India on 
the one hand, and of Europe on the other, springs 
from the manner in which the results of localized 

[96] 



THE HUMAN FACTOR 

transitions from kindred to political organiza- 
tion have affected neighboring populations. In 
the case of interiorly situated groups, the more 
obvious institutions of the new regime are ex- 
tended, through the forceful activity of indi- 
viduals, without the earlier organization of the 
groups brought under subjection being greatly 
disturbed, or the individual members of these 
groups being influenced by any awakening. Thus 
the institution of kingship, with its accompany- 
ing theory of sovereign ownership, is imposed in 
new areas without an attendant break-up of kin- 
dred organization, and without a resultant stimu- 
lus to personal initiative. In the case of exteriorly 
situated peoples, the influence exerted is, on the 
other hand, altogether indirect. Beyond the wall, 
there is no extension of politicization. The fron- 
tier is a declaration of personal ownership, and 
with the internal condition of the exterior bar- 
barians the king has no concern. But the barrier 
or pale, whether of masonry or of armed men, 
obviously exerts a pressure of its own; it acts 
effectively as a dam against which weight accu- 
mulates, and so creates a point of pressure for 
those outside. In the end, the barrier breaks, and j 
with the inundation a new situation is created in \ 

[97] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

which new tribal units are broken up, new indi- 
viduals awake to self-assertion, and a new redis- 
tribution of ownership takes place. 

I have remarked earlier that "transition" has 
not been made the subject of extended compara- 
tive research, and all that has been done here is 
to suggest the fundamental importance of the 
study. Nevertheless, even a superficial inquiry 
brings to light certain points of great interest, 
and we see that transition is in all cases the result 
of pressure and conflict at geographical points 
which are absolutely determined by the con- 
figuration of the earth's surface, and that this 
localization of transition, in place and time, leads 
everywhere to irregularity and unevenness in the 
distribution of political institutions. Most sig- 
nificant of all, the central feature of transition is 
not merely the substitution of territory for blood- 
relationship as the basis of unity in human 
groups, but the emergence of individuality and 
of personal self-assertion, and hence it follows 
that human advance rests ultimately upon the 
foundation of individual initiative and activity. 

4. At an earlier point in this discussion it was 
found necessary, in order to escape from the 

[98] 



THE HUMAN FACTOR 



vagueness of such terms as "civilization," to re- 
strict the inquiry, for the moment, to the begin- 
nings of political organization. If, however, we 
are ever to understand how man has come to be 
as he is, the investigation cannot be limited in 
this manner ; for while human life is, unquestion- 
ably, conditioned by the organization under 
which it is conducted, the actual content of life 
cannot be summed up or expressed in terms of 
organization. The differences which are to be 
observed between groups at the present moment, 
between earlier and later generations of the same 
group, between individuals, and between earlier 
and later periods in the life of the same indi- 
vidual, cannot be epitomized in any description 
of the forms of human association. 

Here, for the sake of clearness, it may be pointed 
out that the practice of any art involves the ac- 
ceptance of specific limitations and the recogni- 
tion of conventional forms within which the 
artist's expression is confined. No student of 
sculpture or poetry, for example, will confuse the 
technique of a statue or a sonnet with the thought 
and emotion which it attempts to convey. In 
short, the work of art is something more than the 
technical rules by which it is conditioned. Now 

[99] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

the conduct of life is an art, and is limited by 
specific rules and conventions, but there appears 
to be a preponderant disposition on the part of 
students of man to regard the exterior rules and 
conventions, laws and social usages, as the essen- 
tial matter for consideration. This is made clear 
when we observe that legislators, publicists, and 
"social workers" hold tenaciously to the opinion 
that the advancement of man is to be effected by 
the simple expedient of modifying the existing 
regulations. Whether this be true or not, there 
can be no question that in the investigation of the 
elements of human history we must set ourselves 
to inquire, not merely how the forms and con- 
ventions of human aggregates have reached their 
present status, but how the content of life has 
come to possess the infinite variety which it ex- 
hibits today. 

In pursuit of this broader inquiry, we may 
begin by saying that what differentiates man 
from animal cannot be what he shares in common 
with his closest non-human relations, and hence 
that, in seeking to account for human advance- 
ment, the common possessions of animal and man 
must be eliminated from consideration. Fortu- 
nately, there is practical agreement among all 
[ioo] 



THE HUMAN FACTOR 

classes of investigators, psychologists, logicians, 
and anthropologists, that the differentia of man 
consists in his possession of articulate speech or 
spoken language. Speech is a difference easily 
determinable, and has in itself proved to be a 
subject of profound interest to scholars, but the 
success that has attended the study of words and 
languages during the last century has somewhat 
obscured the important fact that speech does not 
exist in and for itself. The interest that has been 
taken in the changes of form, sound, and mean- 
ing of words has hindered, until quite recently, 
a just appreciation of the fact that the study of 
words cannot be separated from the study of 
what they designate. Speech comes into exist- 
ence in response to the desire on the part of a 
human being to make himself understood by 
someone else, and is an instrument for the com- 
munication of ideas. Language is a conveying 
medium, and the aim of speech is the convey- 
ance of ideas, not the mere interchange of words. 
Hence the humanist, or student of man, will in- 
terest himself not merely in the form of expres- 
sion, but in what is expressed ; he will pass from 
the individual words of a language to examine 
the ideas conveyed. Linguistic scholars have 
[ ioi ] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
rendered invaluable service in the composition 
of grammars and vocabularies, but they have, not 
infrequently, lost sight of the circumstance that 
any given language is the medium through which 
a particular system of ideas finds expression. 
While, then, we may accept speech as the dis- 
tinguishing mark of humanity, we cannot but 
recognize that the fundamental object of inquiry 
will be the system of ideas represented in a given 
language at a given time. 

If, then, we come to compare, not man and 
brute, but the differing groups that go to make 
up the human population of the globe, the dis- 
tinguishing feature of any group will be, not its 
language, implements, or institutions, but its par- 
ticular idea-system, of which these other mani- 
festations of activity are varying expressions. 
Without exception, the products of human ac- 
tivity are expressions or aspects of the entire men- 
tal content of the group or individual. This men- 
tal content, moreover, is not to be conceived of as 
a mere assemblage of disparate units placed in 
juxtaposition, but as cohering in an idea-system. 
Ideas are not simply accumulated or heaped up ; 
on the contrary, every "new" idea added not only 
modifies, but is in turn modified by the existing 
[ 102] 



THE HUMAN FACTOR 

system into which it is incorporated. Thus it ap- 
pears that no idea-system, any more than an 
actual spoken language, is a deliberate construc- 
tion. Languages are made up of words, but these 
are not consciously and systematically elabo- 
rated ; like the names in a scientific classification 
they come into existence only as occasion de- 
mands, and are elicited by objects, actions, and 
events. Before "plowing," "sowing," and "reap- 
ing" could have been named these actions must 
have been performed and recognized. Similarly, 
the idea-system of a group is not to be attributed 
to foresight or planning, but to the pressure of 
circumstance. It will appear, then, that if we are 
to consider the content of life in addition to the 
exterior forms of human association, the study 
before us must concern itself with the factors and 
processes through which the idea-systems of dif- 
ferent groups have come to be as we find them 
today. 

In justification of thus postulating idea-systems 
as a basis for the comparative study of man, it 
may be pointed out that what we find in "civili- 
zation" is not the product of primary emotions, 
which man shares with animals, but of some ac- 
tivity which he has developed in a characteristic 

[ 103 ] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

manner. This activity may be described as the 
formation and expression of ideas. The physical 
and psychological constitution of man being 
"given" — a point to which reference will subse- 
quently be made — what varies from group to 
group is not this foundation, but the results of 
mental activity ; and we want to know how these 
results have come to exhibit the differences we 
find in the world today. Thus human "evolution" 
is, fundamentally, intellectual "evolution," and 
the diversity of status in human groups at the 
present time is to be traced to differences in men- 
tal activity. This basis of study will be found to 
meet all the requirements of the comparative 
method as exhibited in biological evolution, 
which is founded upon a comparison of the 
phylogenetic or historical series, the ontogenetic 
or biographical series, and the facts of present 
geographical distribution, and the investigation 
of how man has come to be as he is must be placed 
upon such a basis as will make the utilization of 
these categories possible. Furthermore, this basis 
has already been found necessary in different 
lines of humanistic inquiry. Human "advance- 
ment" is not measurable in terms of any one of 
the classes or categories under which human 

[ 104] 



THE HUMAN FACTOR 

activities have been grouped for purposes of 
study. When we consider any one subject like 
religion, art, language, or political organization, 
by itself, we simply impose a voluntary limita- 
tion upon our personal attention ; in actual life, 
on the other hand, the mental activity of man has 
never been divided into separate compartments. 
Hence in dealing with these separate studies we 
require some more general basis of comparison. 
So Hobhouse, tracing the "evolution" of morals, 
takes as a foundation "the collective stock of 
knowledge, the equipment of method and gov- 
erning conceptions which constitute the working 
intellectual capital of any community." Simi- 
larly, S. A. Cook points out that "for the study 
of religion it is necessary to observe the tendency 
of man to blend into one whole his tested and 
untested knowledge, his own experience and that 
of others." "A 'body' or system of beliefs, prac- 
tices, and the like, depends upon people; it is 
part of their larger total 'body' of thought, and 
undergoes development." "The development of 
a man's life and that of his total world of thought 
are interconnected ; and since his prof oundest and 
most valued beliefs are not unchangeable, the 
most vital part of his physical being and that of 

[ 105 ] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

his world of thought are both capable of develop- 
ment. Each depends upon the other, and the 
whole evolves." 

All the more, therefore, when we come to take 
up the broad problem of how man has come to be 
as he is will it be necessary to adopt the canon 
that judgment in regard to the mental activity of 
a given group can be based only upon the totality 
of the various mental phases of culture — lan- 
guage, custom, myth, and art. And this position 
is fortified by McDougalFs opinion that "man, 
since he became man, has progressed in the main 
by means of the increase in volume and improve- 
ment in quality of the sum of knowledge, belief, 
and custom, which constitutes the tradition of 
any society. It is to the superiority of the moral 
and intellectual tradition of his society that the 
superiority of civilized man over existing sav- 
ages and over his savage forefathers is chiefly, if 
not wholly, due." 

As a result of these considerations, we arrive at 
the view that the study of how existing idea- 
systems have come to be what they are provides 
a feasible basis for an investigation of the ad- 
vancement of man. The alternative bases of study 
which ordinarily are adopted concern them- 

[ 106 ] 



THE HUMAN FACTOR 

selves, on the one hand, with the physical consti- 
tution of human beings, and, on the other, with 
the exterior forms of human association. The 
first of these leads at once to the theory that there 
have been and are innately superior races, in- 
nately superior classes, and innately superior in- 
dividuals, and that human advancement has fol- 
lowed from the spontaneous activity of these 
higher elements. As, however, no effort has been 
made to account for the sporadic emergence of 
these exceptions to the general rule of backward- 
ness and stagnation, in the long run the argument 
is just an assertion of the physical superiority of 
those who have become conspicuous. The second 
basis of study fixes attention upon the forms of 
group organization, and provides no opening to 
a broader consideration of the content of human 
life; whereas the basis here proposed brings 
under one view the entire range of activities rep- 
resented in religion, art, literature, philosophy, 
science, and co-ordinates these activities with the 
facts of history and of group organization. 

5. If we turn to examine the relation of idea- 
systems to group organization, a remarkable 
parallelism in development becomes apparent. 
It has already been pointed out that under primi- 
[107] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

tive conditions organization is relatively stable, 
and that the individual is bound by the authority 
of the group. The idea-systems of primitive 
groups are highly restricted in content, but, in 
addition to this limitation, the traditional ideas 
entertained have, in general, been transmuted 
into customary actions and ways of doing things. 
So, religious ideas are concentrated in rites and 
observances, and explanations of natural phe- 
nomena are embodied in symbolic ceremonies. 
In short, the whole body of custom and tradition 
represents ideas fixed in action. Since these modes 
of action, which are associated with all the essen- 
tial activities of life, must be prosecuted with 
rigid adherence to precedent, it is evident that 
any reconsideration of the validity of the ideas 
upon which they rest is practically out of the 
question. Primitive man does not "think," he 
performs definitely prescribed actions under the 
eye of the community, which, in turn, is vitally 
concerned in the exactness with which the repe- 
tition of formula or ceremony is carried out. It 
will thus be observed, as Professor Shotwell sug- 
gests, that a study of the relation of custom and 
observance to idea-systems, and of the conditions 
under which they become "survivals" when the 
[ 108 ] 



THE HUMAN FACTOR 

latter have changed, must ultimately constitute 
an essential feature of this inquiry, but as yet 
such study has not been undertaken. 

It has been indicated that the breakdown of 
kindred organization, following upon migration 
and collision, tended to release the individual 
from the domination of the group, and to create 
a situation in which personal initiative and self- 
assertion became possible. It has now to be 
pointed out that, while this release may be re- 
garded as affecting primarily the submission of 
the individual to the mandatory authority of the 
group, essentially it opens for the individual the 
possibility of thinking for himself without refer- 
ence to group precedent. The emergence of indi- 
viduality, with its accompanying manifestations 
of personal initiative and self-assertion, is inti- 
mately associated with the beginnings of inde- 
pendent mental activity, of thinking which may 
lead the individual to question the validity of 
inherited group ideas. 

This striking result, it must be understood, is 
not achieved by the individual of his own voli- 
tion or accord ; it is thrust upon him by the force 
of circumstances. To make the point clear, we 
may say, speculatively, that had there ever been 

[ 109] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

but one system of ideas common to all men, ad- 
vancement would have been impossible, for 
progress in ideas springs from comparison, and 
a sense of difference could not arise from con- 
templation of different instances of the same 
thing. Conversely, the critical spirit is easily 
enough aroused by the juxtaposition of different 
means for attaining the same end ; so that differ- 
ent observances for effecting the same result, dif- 
ferent mythological explanations of the same 
phenomena, when brought into contact, may be 
expected to lead to questionings and comparisons. 
That some such path has actually been followed 
in the past seems clear. Ernst Curtius pointed 
out, long ago, that the influence of sea-navigation 
upon the development of the Greeks had been 
very marked, as it suddenly brought face to face 
men who had been living under widely different 
conditions, and hence induced an endless com- 
paring, learning, and teaching. A more drastic 
form of the same process is exhibited, however, 
when successive migrating groups invade the 
land, be it ancient Greece or medieval Italy, and 
a time ensues of "constant war-paths and uproot- 
ings of peoples." In such circumstances, the 
whole traditional body of customs, rites, and 

[no] 



THE HUMAN FACTOR 

observances tends to be overthrown, for the tur- 
moil no longer permits of opportunity to pro- 
pitiate the slain, or to maintain the sacrifices for 
the dead; the lines of kindred are broken, and 
new groups, composed of men whom chance has 
thrown together, are formed under the leader- 
ship of some individual whose self-assertion, 
backed by strength or craft, seems to offer pro- 
tection. This is the essence of all "Dark Ages," 
in which, through swiftly moving change, con- 
trasts are made vividly apparent, men awake to 
the perception of differences in ideas, and criti- 
cism is born. 
At the present time the view is very widely en- 
tertained that human advancement is the out- 
come of the commingling of ideas through the 
contact of different groups. Thus Henry Balfour 
says, typically, "This process of grafting one idea 
upon another, or, as we may call it, the hybridiza- 
tion of ideas and experience, is a factor in the 
advancement of culture whose influence cannot 
be overestimated. It is, in fact, the main secret of 
progress." So, too, F. W. Maitland holds that 
"the rapidly progressive groups have been just 
those which have not worked out their own sal- 
vation, but have appropriated alien ideas." 

Em] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

While, in the main, accepting these statements, 
it must, nevertheless, be insisted that the great 
advances of mankind have been due, not to the 
mere aggregation, assemblage, or acquisition of 
disparate ideas, but to the emergence of a certain 
type of mental activity which is set up by the 
opposition of different idea-systems. This is il- 
lustrated in Jastrow's remark that civilization 
is everywhere the result of the stimulus evoked 
by the friction of one group upon another. The 
stimulus is mental, and the friction springs from 
the contact of differing customs and explana- 
tions. The simple commingling of ideas un- 
doubtedly takes place, but the important point is 
that different ideas in regard to the same subject, 
when maintained in opposition by members of 
the same group, necessarily evoke comparison 
and critical discussion. The outcome of this is not 
always, nor even generally, a choice between two 
alternatives, for the debate will leave neither of 
the original positions wholly unchanged, and 
hence a new idea-system will arise which is not 
a selection of materials drawn from various 
sources, but a resultant of the juxtaposition of 
different bodies of thought. 
We may see, then, that, under primitive condi- 

[112] 



THE HUMAN FACTOR 

tions, the type of organization operates to main- 
tain a fixity of relations, customs, and ideas; 
under transitional conditions, however, the domi- 
nant factor is the release of the individual, mani- 
festing itself in the self-assertion which gives to 
the new organization its characteristic form, and 
in the personal criticism through which the older 
idea-systems are modified and changed. 

6. If, as would thus appear, differences in idea- 
systems have been of crucial importance in the 
history of mankind, the question as to how these 
differences have arisen will naturally force itself 
upon our consideration. 

Differences in idea-systems are, fundamentally, 
man's response to differences in his surroundings. 
This fact has been obscured, in general estima- 
tion, by the somewhat exaggerated use which has 
been made of it by men like Buckle and Spencer, 
who, for example, have attributed the growth of 
superstition to the terror inspired by the threat- 
ening aspects of nature in tropical countries. If, 
however, we keep to a less speculative level, it 
will readily be admitted that the surroundings 
in which their respective lives are passed will 
present very different objects for consideration 
to the Eskimo and to the Arab; and so, while 

["3] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

the language of the one has many different words 
for "seal," that of the other displays a similar 
elaboration of terms for the "camel." This form 
of dependence of the group upon its habitat is so 
far recognized as unequivocal and precise that 
it has been made the basis of extended philologi- 
cal research with the object of determining the 
earliest seat of various peoples, notably the 
"Aryans"; for where the names of natural ob- 
jects, such as trees and animals, have been bor- 
rowed from other languages it is assumed that 
these could not have been known to the particu- 
lar group in its original home. It is true that ob- 
jections have been urged to this course of reason- 
ing, but the fact remains that, where the condi- 
tions of life lead men to pursue the occupation of 
fishing, the foreground of their interest will be 
dominated by terms and ideas which would be 
entirely different if the same individuals were 
engaged in cattle-raising or farming. In short, 
the surroundings in which a group is placed de- 
termine its primary interests, and these, as Boas 
has pointed out, affect the entire character of its 
vocabulary and the make-up of its system of 
ideas. 
This fact is illustrated, for example, in Jas- 

[in] 



THE HUMAN FACTOR 

trow's study of Sumerian and Babylonian ideas 
of beginnings, "which may be summed up," he 
says, "in the statement that in the early Sumerian 
view the chief factor in the Creation myth is the 
bringing about of vegetation and fertility, where- 
as in the later Babylonian or Akkadian tale the 
main stress is laid upon the substitution of law 
and order for primitive chaos and lawlessness." 
Again, it is difficult to refrain from calling at- 
tention, in however condensed a form, to the 
examination of "The Background of Greek 
Science" by J. L. Myres, in which he endeavors 
"to recover some of the limiting conditions under 
which any scheme of scientific knowledge and 
scientific method necessarily came into being in 
Greek lands." 

Considered as a theatre, a place for observing 
nature, he says, Greek lands offer in some re- 
spects unequalled facilities. They are a region of 
abrupt contrasts, and frank revelations of what 
nature is, in its infinitely various detail. Its clear 
air decimates distances — witness Lucretius' re- 
mark that far-off lights do not grow smaller; but 
its strong contrasts of hot and cold, due to in- 
tensity of sunlight and rapidity of radiation, con- 
tinually present the atmosphere as a perceptible 

["5] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
fluid, with shimmering ripples over each roasted 
rock, and with an upper surface, emphatic as a 
sea-level, on which the wool-pack clouds sit like 
snowflakes on a window pane. In such a climate, 
too, Vet' and 'dry' are as clearly defined in their 
antagonism as 'hot' and 'cold' ; for wet and dry 
are not only natural opposites, but are engaged in 
perpetual struggle here, in alternating seasons of 
rain and rainlessness. With the other great an- 
titheses of the physical philosophy, light and 
darkness, hard and soft, sweet and bitter, it is the 
same; but most striking of all, perhaps, is the 
extraordinary rapidity both of decomposition 
and of organic growth. All these, Myres con- 
tinues, "challenge curiosity about the origin and 
the nature of life, with peculiar insistence, and 
apparent facility of experiment. Who, then, or 
what, maintains the world? This, for men, as 
for Olympians, if Olympians thought about such 
things, was the supreme question to be asked of 
nature. It was a question of minor interest, and 
merely historical value, 'Who made the world?' 
and 'What shall it be in the end thereof?' This 
indifference to cosmogony and eschatology is 
characteristic of Greek physical speculation, and 
greatly lightened its task. It stands in the strong- 

[n6] 



THE HUMAN FACTOR 

est contrast to the Oriental, and particularly the 
Babylonian, insistence on origins, and interest 
in creation myths; and enhances the Greek in- 
sistence on questions about the structure, the 
maintenance, and the current behavior of the 
world; questions which Oriental, and particu- 
larly Babylonian thought, neglects, or glozes 
over." 

Fundamentally, then, differences in idea-sys- 
tems are determined by differences in man's 
physical surroundings, and these differences are 
maintained through the discipline exercised by 
the group over the individual. When, however, 
we come to examine the factors in human ad- 
vancement, it appears that radical changes in 
idea-systems follow upon the collision of groups 
from dissimilar habitats. So, it was not, as has 
been thought, because he rode a horse that the 
nomad from Central Asia influenced greatly the 
lives of the dwellers in the outer circle of Eura- 
sian lands, but because the conditions of his life 
developed a system of ideas which was wholly 
different from theirs. And here it is of the high- 
est importance to observe, with Hogarth, that the 
relatively small and well-marked area of the 
Ancient East, in which the earliest marked ad- 

["7] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

vancement of mankind appears to have taken 
place, contains within itself no less than six 
divisions characterized by large differences of a 
geographical nature. These are Asia Minor, 
Armenia, Syria, Arabia, Mesopotamia, and 
western Iran, and I am unable, at the moment, 
to recall any area similarly restricted in which 
so many distinct types of habitat are placed in 
close association. Neither lapse of time, nor 
uniformity of government has been able to over- 
come the striking differences which the varia- 
tions in habitat have promoted in the idea-sys- 
tems of the inhabitants of these regions. As has 
already been indicated, the lower valley of the 
Euphrates and Tigris represents the natural 
focal point of human movement in these lands, 
the terminal of many routes of travel, and we 
may now see that while this central position im- 
plies a maximum exposure to attack, it implies 
also a maximum exposure to different systems of 
ideas. 

Finally, in confirmation of the hypothesis that 
the changes which have contributed to human 
advancement have ensued from the collision of 
groups from widely different habitats, and hence 
of different idea-systems, we may point to the 

[n8] 



THE HUMAN FACTOR 

initial stages of those great outbursts of intel- 
lectual activity which have distinguished every 
people which has risen above the level of primi- 
tive man. So, the historian of China is forced to 
repeat, from chapter to chapter, the formula: 
"first the successful invasion, the destruction of 
the old power, and then the formation of new 
nations, governments, and types of men" ; and the 
summary of results in each case is typified in the 
statement that "not the least of the Mongols' gifts 
to China was the stimulus and fertilization of the 
native intellect in the domain of the imagina- 
tion." Similarly, Vincent Smith, the latest his- 
torian of India, remarks that "the rule of the 
able and long-lived monarchs of the Gupta 
dynasty coincided with an extraordinary out- 
burst of intellectual activity of all kinds. The 
personal patronage of the kings no doubt has 
some effect, but deeper causes must have been at 
work to produce such results. Experience proves 
that the contact or collision of diverse modes of 
civilization is the most potent stimulus to in- 
tellectual and artistic progress, and, in my opin- 
ion, the eminent achievements of the Gupta 
period are mainly due to such contact with 
foreign civilizations, both on the east and on the 

[119] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
west." Again, the entire history of Babylonia and 
Assyria is an epitome of such situations, and this 
leads a recent historian to observe: "it may be 
put down as an axiom that nowhere does a high 
form of culture arise without the commingling 
of diverse ethnic elements." "The Euphrates 
valley from the time that it looms up on the his- 
torical horizon," he continues, "is the seat of a 
mixed population. Egyptian culture is the out- 
come of the mixture of Semitic with Hamitic 
elements. Civilization begins in Greece with the 
movements of Asiatic peoples, partly at least 
non-Aryan, across the Aegean sea. In Rome we 
find the old Aryan stock mixed with a strange 
element, known as Etruscan. In modern times, 
France, Germany, and England furnish illus- 
trations of the process of the commingling of 
diverse ethnic elements leading to advanced 
forms of civilization." Ultimately, attention may 
be called to Petrie's conclusion in his memorable 
study of The Revolutions of Civilisation that 
"every civilization of a settled population tends 
to incessant decay from its maximum condition ; 
and this decay continues until it is too weak to 
initiate anything, when a fresh race comes in, 
and utilizes the old stock to graft on, both in 
[120] 



THE HUMAN FACTOR 

blood and culture. As soon as the mixture is well 
started, it rapidly grows on the old soil, and pro- 
duces a new wave of civilization. There is no new 
generation without a mixture of blood, parthe- 
nogenesis is unknown in the birth of nations." 

7. At this point, it is necessary to revert for a 
moment to a theory which has gained wide ac- 
ceptance in modern times, namely, that human 
advancement has been the direct result of war. 
Thus Brinton, himself a veteran of the Civil 
War, urges that "in spite of the countless miseries 
which follow in its train, war has probably been 
the highest stimulus to racial progress. It is the 
most potent excitant known of all the faculties. 
The intense instinct of self-preservation will 
prompt to an intellectual energy which nothing 
else can awake. The grandest works of imagina- 
tion, the immortal outbursts of the poets, from 
Homer to Whitman, have been under the stimu- 
lus of the war-cry ringing in their ears." It will 
not be necessary to epitomize the views to which 
this idea has given rise, or to indicate the variety 
of the arguments which have been adduced in its 
support. From all that has here been said, it is 
obvious that war has played a most significant 
part in the advancement of mankind, but the 

[l2l] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

benefits it has conferred have been confined to 
the break-up of crystallized systems of organi- 
zation and of thought. Since man has not become 
sufficiently self-conscious of the natural processes 
which dominate his life, he continues to submit 
to the fixative influences of group discipline, and 
throws all his weight in favor of maintaining the 
status quo. It follows that, in the past, the gate- 
way of human advance has been the violent con- 
flict of the representatives of old and new ways 
of thought and action, whether the old and new 
be embodied, for the occasion, in states, in groups 
within a given state, or in single individuals. It 
must, therefore, be regarded as a shortsighted 
view which imagines the conflict thus precipi- 
tated as in itself a desirable thing, though, here- 
tofore, man's ignorance of himself has made such 
conflicts inevitable. On the other hand, this 
opinion emphasizes, as perhaps nothing else 
could at the present moment, the supreme impor- 
tance of an understanding of the elements of his- 
tory. To reach this desideratum it has been neces- 
sary, first of all, to show that the history of man 
is homogeneous throughout, and to point out the 
factors which exercise a determinant influence 
upon the course of events ; but to gain a knowl- 
[122] 



THE HUMAN FACTOR 

edge which may be of direct service in the con- 
sideration of human affairs we must now turn 
our attention, more specifically, to the processes 
through the operation of which man everywhere 
has come to be as he is. 



[ 123] 



IV 
METHOD AND RESULTS 

i. The task of science in the presence of a his- 
tory, be it the history of the physical universe, of 
the earth, of the forms of life upon the earth, or 
of man, is the discovery of the processes through 
which things — stars, strata, and species — have 
come to be as they are, and each of the major 
sciences, such as Astronomy, Geology, and Biol- 
ogy, has entered upon the modern phase of its 
activities with the recognition of this funda- 
mental problem. Commonly, this new departure 
is associated in men's minds with the acceptance 
of the idea of "evolution," which, in its most 
general form, implies simply that things have 
come to be as they are through a sequence of 
changes undergone in the past. As a consequence, 
it has been affirmed that "evolution" is just the 
projection of the idea of human history upon the 
world of nature ; but the restricted sense in which 
this notion is true is that men have come to ob- 
serve the phenomena of nature in a time relation 

[124] 



METHOD AND RESULTS 
or perspective. If, on this account, the student of 
organic nature may be said to have applied the 
idea of human history to his own subject-matter, 
he has in no sense adopted the historian's method. 
He does not attempt to write a narrative of what 
has happened in the past. In fact, it is not open 
to him to present his results in chronological 
form, since the biological record is entirely lack- 
ing in specific dates for happenings. From this 
deficiency most important consequences have en- 
sued, for, on the one hand, the evolutionist has 
been forced to devote himself to the investigation 
of the processes of history, while, on the other, 
in presence of an undated record he has assumed 
an eventless world. 

The outcome of this situation is apparent in the 
series of assumptions upon which Darwin based 
his work. In a thoroughly scientific spirit he set 
himself to discover the process or processes mani- 
fested in the emergence of new species. Never- 
theless, accepting the authority of Sir Charles 
Lyell, he began by assuming that "Time is to 
Nature endless and as nothing," and from this 
proceeded to his second assumption that new 
species have arisen only through the slow cumu- 
lation of infinitely slight modifications. Further- 

[125] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

more, he took over from Lyell the methodologi- 
cal theory that we must interpret the past history 
of the earth and its inhabitants by the present, 
that we must seek for an explanation of what has 
happened by the study of what is happening, on 
the assumption that the processes manifested 
have never been different in kind or degree from 
what they are now. Lastly, he believed that there 
had been but one process involved in the origin 
of all species, that of "natural selection." 
What Darwin attempted was to describe, as 
simply and directly as possible, the mode by 
which, in one particular field of nature, inter- 
actions result in something new. The character 
of his theory is immediately traceable to the ab- 
sence of specific dates in the historical materials 
upon which he was forced to rely; had dated evi- 
dence been available, his conception of unmarked 
time, of time as an unbroken flow, could not have 
arisen. It follows that, having dated events to 
work from, the historian of man, when he comes 
to investigate processes, will adopt a procedure 
widely different from that followed by Darwin 
and his contemporaries. Instead of confining his 
attention to the present, utilizing the facts of the 
past for purposes of verification only, he will 

[126] 



METHOD AND RESULTS 

begin by examining the evidence for the actual 
changes that have taken place. Hence the pro- 
cedure which is bound up with the conception 
that the present is the key to the past will, if one 
might so say, be reversed, and "History" will 
remain the study of the past with a view to the 
elucidation of the processes manifested in the 
present. 

2. The scientific student of human history can- 
not accept Darwin's assumptions and procedure 
as a model upon which to pattern his inquiry, but 
he is not therefore left without guidance. An 
alternative method for approaching the investi- 
gation of how things have come to be as they are 
was suggested by Huxley. The great exponent 
of Darwinism pointed out that any hypothesis of 
progressive modification must take into consid- 
eration the fact of persistence without progres- 
sion through indefinite periods, and, further- 
more, urged upon Darwin's attention the pos- 
sibility of occasional "rapid leaps" or changes in 
nature. In short, Huxley recognized three differ- 
ent sets of processes as contributory to the emer- 
gence of the present status: first, those repre- 
sented in fixity, stability, or persistence ; second, 
those manifested in slow continuous modifica- 

[ 127] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

tions; and, third, those revealed in explicit 
changes or events. 

In later discussion the elements unrecognized 
by Darwin have more and more forced them- 
selves into the foreground of debate, and have 
colored the views held by all investigators. Thus 
De Vries supposed that after periods of relative 
fixity, during which they are subject only to 
fluctuating variations, living beings may pass 
through shorter periods when their forms are 
abruptly modified in different directions by dis- 
continuous changes. So, too, George Darwin ex- 
pressed the opinion that the study of stability and 
instability furnishes the problems which the 
physicist and biologist alike attempt to solve, and 
he envisaged the course of "evolution," not as uni- 
form and slow, but as divided between a sequence 
of slight continuous modifications accumulating 
through a long period, and somewhat sudden 
transformations which would appear as histori- 
cal events. Again, his brother, Francis Darwin, 
regarded "evolution," not as a process of modi- 
fication, but as a process of drilling organisms 
into habits, and thought of an organism as a ma- 
chine in which energy can be set free by some 
kind of releasing mechanism. This latter idea, 

[128] 



METHOD AND RESULTS 

as will appear later, has been carried further by 
William Bateson, who also believes that varia- 
tion occurs as a definite event, and that we can 
see no changes in progress around us in the con- 
temporary world which can be imagined likely 
to culminate in the evolution of forms distinct 
in the larger sense. Finally, not to multiply in- 
stances unnecessarily, the essential feature of 
what I have called the alternative mode of ap- 
proach is brought put by Hans Gadow in asking 
why it is that mammalian material can produce 
what is denied to the lower classes. Why have 
they not all by this time reached the same grade 
of perfection? "Because," he says, "every new 
group is less hampered by tradition, much of 
which must be discarded by the new departure, 
and some of its energy is set free to follow up this 
new course, straight, with ever-growing results, 
until in its turn this becomes an old rut out of 
which a new jolt leads once more into fresh 
fields." 

In the study of man, the contemporaries of Dar- 
win maintained a tradition of evolutionary in- 
quiry which investigators like Tylor and M'Len- 
nan regarded as completely independent of biol- 
ogy. This, indeed, is evident when we find that 
[ 129] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

Tylor considered the essential points for inquiry 
to be "permanence, modification, and survival." 
Maine had before this insisted that the stable 
part of our mental, moral, and physical consti- 
tution is the largest part of it, and offers a resist- 
ance to change that is rarely overcome. Clifford, 
while imbued with the newer biological concep- 
tions of his time, instituted a contrast between 
positive and negative conditions of development : 
"a race," he says, "in proportion as it is plastic 
and capable of change, may be regarded as young 
and vigorous, while a race which is fixed, per- 
sistent in form, unable to change, is as surely 
effete, worn out, in peril of extinction." Bagehot, 
again, who wrote his Physics and Politics to il- 
lustrate the application of the principles of 
"natural selection" and "inheritance" to political 
society, recurs throughout his book to the in- 
fluences which have made nations "stationary." 
He sees in revolutions the outbreak of passions 
long repressed by fixed custom, but starting into 
life as soon as that repression had been catas- 
trophically removed. Furthermore, he sets a 
question which must be regarded as funda- 
mental: "If fixity is an invariable ingredient in 

[ 130] 



METHOD AND RESULTS 

early civilizations, how then did any civilization 
become unfixed?" 

It is, however, in the study of the history of lan- 
guage that this alternative method has been most 
clearly defined. So Whitney, whose Life and 
Growth of Language may be regarded as the 
classic presentation of this subject in English, 
utilizes explicitly the three types of processes 
mentioned above. Thus, while, as is usual in the 
writings of philologists, he devotes the greater 
part of his book to a description of the processes 
through which language has been slowly and 
continuously modified in transmission from gen- 
eration to generation, he calls attention to the 
operation of processes which tend to maintain 
every spoken dialect the same from age to age, 
and points, as in a third category, to the fact that 
occasionally whole communities have been led 
to adopt the speech of another people as a result 
of some great revolution. Indeed, it may be said 
that, so far as method is concerned, the historical 
study of language is one of the few subjects in 
the whole range of evolutionary inquiry that has 
been placed upon a satisfactory basis. 

Here it may be observed, by way of addendum, 
how frequently the idea has been expressed, as 

[ 131 ] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
by Bagehot and L. H. Morgan, that portions of 
the human race have been halted at certain stages 
of progress. Henry Balfour, for example, is of 
opinion that the heterogeneity of groups may 
readily be explained by assuming that while the 
progress of some races has received relatively 
little check, the culture development of others 
has been retarded to a greater or less extent. 
Hocart, again, attributes "stagnation" to the fail- 
ure of some factor or factors (described by him 
as "constant in their operation") which make for 
continuous progression. This point of view, how- 
ever, embodies the assumption that "progress" 
is to be anticipated, an opinion which Maine was 
at pains to controvert, and which is in no way 
justified by the evidence. "Progress" is excep- 
tional ; hence our first concern must be with the 
processes, which are universal in their operation, 
that make for fixity and stagnation. Having de- 
termined what these processes are, it will then be 
possible to observe the influences of other pro- 
cesses through which modification and change 
are brought about. 

3. Before proceeding further, there is, however, 
a point of some importance which must be dealt 
with parenthetically. Expressed in the simplest 

[ 132] 



METHOD AND RESULTS 

terms, this may be stated in the question : What 
are the limits of humanistic inquiry? The query 
must be faced, for humanists in all branches of 
the study of man seem to feel it necessary to base 
their discussions upon what they conceive to be 
the conclusions of modern biology. In this way 
the unavoidable difficulties of the study of man 
have been needlessly complicated, and the stu- 
dent involves himself in debates over highly 
technical matters with which he is not compe- 
tent to deal. Every science involves, as a funda- 
mental condition of its pursuit, the conscious re- 
striction of attention to a particular set of facts, 
and the success of any scientific undertaking 
turns upon the consistency and definiteness with 
which this initial restriction is observed. For 
scientific purposes, every investigation must be 
confined within definite limits; no science pre- 
tends to deal with the whole complex of natural 
phenomena, and in the study of man there are 
obvious reasons why the field of inquiry should 
be limited wherever possible. 
The problem before us is to find out how man 
has come to be as he is everywhere throughout 
the world today. The fundamental restriction 
upon the limits of the inquiry is that the hu- 

[i33] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
manist will accept man "as given," and leave all 
questions as to his origin and physical differences 
to the biologist. 
While, at first sight, this may appear a radical 
departure, there is ample justification for the 
step, over and above the fact that neither the 
biologist nor the humanist is in a position to deal 
successfully with the entire field. There is, in 
short, an important body of evidence which in- 
dicates the "psychic unity of mankind." A typi- 
cal example may be found in the remarks of 
Stefansson on the Eskimo: "Commonly," he 
says, "primitive people are supposed to have cer- 
tain mental qualities, designated as instinctive, 
through which they vastly excel us along certain 
lines ; and to make up for this excellence they are 
supposed to be far our inferiors in certain other 
mental characteristics. My own observations in- 
cline me to believe that there are no points in 
which they, as a race, are any more inferior to us 
than might be expected from the environment 
under which they have grown up from child- 
hood ; and neither have they any points of supe- 
riority over the white man, except those which 
are developed directly by the environment. Of 
course an Eskimo can find his way about in the 

[134] 



METHOD AND RESULTS 

wilderness better than the city dweller or the 
sailor, but he is likely to fall behind the white 
man of experience in just about the proportion 
you would expect, from knowing the greater ad- 
vantage of training in logical thinking which the 
white man has had." Similarly, writing of the 
Sea Dyaks of Borneo, Gomes says: "Allowing 
for differences in environment, and consequent 
difference of similes, the idea expressed in many 
Dyak proverbs is precisely similar to that of 
some well known among the English." "The 
radical fundamental thoughts and passions of 
mankind all over the world, in every age, are 
much the same." 

Judgments such as these may be found in the 
reports of observers in every part of the world, 
and the general view expressed is widely ac- 
cepted by anthropologists. It is entirely possible 
that the obvious physical differences between 
men may be accompanied by corresponding 
psychical differences, but even admitting that 
there are congenital differences in "races," and 
that the influences of these differences may ulti- 
mately become an important study, in our present 
state of ignorance these differences are negligible 

quantities, and man may be treated as an un- 

[135] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

changing quantity. The opinion of anthropolo- 
gists coincides, in general, with that of psycholo- 
gists like McDougall, who thinks that the pri- 
mary innate tendencies, which are the essential 
springs of motive powers of all thought and 
action, are common to men of every race and of 
every age. So investigators widely separated in 
their immediate interests reach the same conclu- 
sion, namely, that we have every reason to think 
that the mind of the savage and the mind of the 
civilized are fundamentally alike. "There can 
be no doubt," Boas states, "that in the main the 
mental characteristics of man are the same all 
over the world." "The working of the human 
mind," Gomme believes, "is on the same plane 
wherever and whenever it operates or has op- 
erated." 

It must be admitted, however, that even this 
unanimity does not remove all possibility of 
question or debate, and therefore it is that we 
accept Morgan's axiom of "the specific identity 
of the brain of all the races of mankind," and 
Temple's "law of the constancy of human rea- 
soning," not as self-evident or demonstrated 
truths, but as methodological assumptions set up 
for the purposes of a particular investigation. 
[136] 



METHOD AND RESULTS 

We delimit our field by taking man "as given," 
by assuming that all human groups have started 
from the same level, that in every case the same 
capacity for "advancement" has been present, 
that man is, and has been, very much the same 
all the world over. 

4. Turning, then, to consider the processes 
manifested in fixity or stagnation, we may ob- 
serve that the mental activity of any individual 
is conditioned at every step by the idea-system 
of which he stands possessed. Now, at bottom, 
this conditioning body of ideas is not a product 
of the individual's own activity, but is imparted 
to him by the group into which he is born, and 
in which he is brought up. Every individual 
comes into existence in association with some 
group, and is subjected from the commencement 
of his career to a discipline or drilling in the 
modes of thinking, feeling, and acting of the 
group. Thus at the foundation of his life there 
lies a great body of conclusions, motives, and 
customs for which he is in no manner responsible, 
but in accordance with which his behavior is un- 
consciously regulated. "He accepts from the 
group," as Brinton says, "the ideas, conclusions, 
and opinions common to it, and the motives of 
[i37] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

volition, such as customs and rules of conduct, 
which it collectively sanctions." 
This normal condition of dependence is most 
easily discernible in the case of primitive man, 
for the lower we descend in the scale of civiliza- 
tion the more strictly, to all appearance, is the 
individual controlled by the group of which he 
forms a part. Indeed, the savage is completely 
hedged about by conventions, at once minute and 
obligatory, the violation of which is attended by 
drastic penalties. Hence, as McDougall remarks, 
"in primitive societies the precision of the cus- 
tomary code and the exact coincidence of public 
opinion with the code, allow no occasion for 
deliberation upon conduct, no scope for indi- 
vidual judgment and choice." "We see the same 
result among all savage communities still exist- 
ing on the earth, and among all peoples of whom 
we have any record at the dawn of civilization. 
Their actions, whether individual or collective, 
are hampered, controlled, or enforced at every 
step by custom." It is, unquestionably, due to this 
rigid enforcement of custom that the lower 
groups have remained for long periods of time 
in a fixed or stationary condition, that their man- 

[138] 



METHOD AND RESULTS 

ners, customs, and modes of life have continued 
almost unaltered for generations. 

While, however, the discipline of the individ- 
ual by the group may be more immediately ap- 
parent in groups less advanced than our own, the 
same process is visibly operative in modern life. 
For, indeed, what we mean by "civilization" and 
"culture" is neither more nor less than the store 
of ideas, beliefs, conventional opinions, and 
tastes which is transmitted from each generation 
to the next, and into which each member of the 
community is inducted by his elders. And while 
the modern teacher, but recently become self- 
conscious of his function, has much to say of the 
responsibility of the community for the "educa- 
tion" of the child, there has been, as Cook re- 
marks, a pretty successful education of the race 
from the days of primitive prehistoric man. It is 
but formulating the practice of the ages to say 
that the resources of government and law, reli- 
gion and morality, must be enlisted to constrain 
the individual in order to procure a common 
likeness in impulses, habits, and ideas within the 
group. 

It follows from this unsought initiation into the 
idea-system of his ancestors that, even in the most 

[139] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

backward group, the individual enters upon life 
at a relatively high stage of human advancement; 
he stands upon a platform which has been labo- 
riously constructed by his unremembered prede- 
cessors. At the same time, it must be recognized 
that, even in the most advanced groups, this in- 
itiation imposes severe limitations. At best, the 
platform is narrow; and the individual acquires 
habits of thought and a fixity of ideas which ren- 
der him unduly tenacious of what has been incul- 
cated in him, and unduly suspicious and obsti- 
nate in presence of what may appear to him to be 
different or new. While, then, the educative dis- 
cipline tends to preserve what has been acquired, 
it presents a very real obstacle to further advance. 
In face of this consideration, the theory com- 
monly expressed, that "the inheritance of the 
permanent achievements of one generation by the 
next is the main factor of progress," that, in fact, 
human advancement has been due to the mainte- 
nance of tradition, to the drilling through which 
the individual has been put in possession of the 
acquisitions of the group, will be seen to express 
but a partial truth, for if this process had been 
the only one in operation advancement would, 
manifestly, have been impossible. What, how- 
[140] 



METHOD AND RESULTS 

ever, we have in this process of group discipline 
is the fundamental element to be considered in 
any attempt to show how man everywhere has 
come to be as he is today. This it is that produces 
that condition of sameness, stagnation, fixity, and 
persistence which has been dwelt upon by all 
who have had occasion to speak of backward 
peoples, lower classes, and illiterate individuals. 
The operation of this process tends to the mainte- 
nance of the idea-system of the group or indi- 
vidual as it exists at any given moment, and the 
study of man involves, as its next step, an inquiry 
as to how modifications and changes in idea- 
systems have been, and still are, brought about. 
5. Under actual conditions this fixity of ideas is 
never complete, and in all human groups there 
may be observed in operation certain processes 
through which idea-systems are being slowly but 
continuously modified. 

The processes of modification are of various 
types and these are of varying degrees of in- 
fluence. In the first place, we may readily see that 
while the initial discipline of any two individ- 
uals may proceed along the same lines, and while 
their lives may be led in the same, surroundings, 
their experiences in life will never be identical, 

[ho 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

and in maturity their responses to any given ex- 
citation will not be exactly the same. The differ- 
ence of response will be all the greater if the lives 
of the two men have been passed in different cir- 
cumstances. Again, while every member of a 
primitive group is drilled in its traditional ob- 
servances and customs, the performance of these 
obligatory acts cannot be identically transmitted 
from generation to generation; unconsciously 
and unobserved, modifications will creep in. 
This is true even in respect to verbal formulae, 
the value of which is believed to reside in their 
exact repetition, for here, in addition to the pos- 
sible treacheries of memory, the reproduction 
will be affected by the unceasing modifications in 
the use of words. Language, indeed, provides in 
itself a perfect illustration of the fact that use 
entails wear, and it is in language that the pro- 
cesses of modification have been most carefully 
observed. 

Furthermore, while it is taken for granted that 
men are very much the same all the world over, 
this is not to be taken to mean that all men are 
identical. They are the same on the average, 
which implies that w T ith reference to any given 
characteristic or faculty a certain percentage of 

[ H2] 



METHOD AND RESULTS 

the individuals in a group will be above and 
below the mean. It follows, for example, that in 
any group there will be some individuals of 
greater personal initiative than the majority of 
their fellows. These undoubtedly will have an in- 
fluence, but what is frequently overlooked is that 
the mental equipment, the idea-system, of such 
individuals, however gifted they may be, is 
strictly that of the group to which they belong. 
For more than one reason, indeed, no "genius" 
can make any great departure from the idea- 
system of his people; the individual may in- 
fluence the group, but such modifications as he 
may succeed in introducing will proceed along 
established lines, and so cannot be regarded as 
significant "changes." 

It is evident, then, that the idea-systems of all 
groups are subject to slow continuous modifica- 
tion through the operation of processes which 
may be described as internal or self-contained. 
They are also modified in varying degrees by 
"the contact of peoples." This term has acquired 
a special significance in recent years as identified 
with the hypothesis — based upon the ethno- 
graphical study of the distribution of culture 
objects, designs, and practices — that the present 

[ H3 ] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

status of any group is to be explained in terms of 
the transmission of culture elements from one 
group to another. It may at once be said that this 
hypothesis describes a process, practically uni- 
versal in its application, which has been of the 
greatest importance in the gradual modification 
of idea-systems, but one, on the other hand, 
which cannot be accepted as providing an expla- 
nation of the phenomenon of "advance." 
To make this distinction clear, it is necessary to 
consider that the process of modification by ex- 
terior contact has many phases. A simple form 
may be instanced in the interchange of objects 
between contiguous groups, and by this means 
culture objects may be dispersed over great dis- 
tances by a series of border exchanges, without 
the coincident transportation of individuals. 
An extension of this phase comes when the ob- 
jects or practices are carried from one group to 
another by traders, missionaries, or other trav- 
ellers ; and one has but to consider the spread of 
the megalithic monuments to recognize the an- 
tiquity of this mode of influence. Another stage 
is reached when traders, like the Cretans, Phoe- 
nicians, and Greeks, establish themselves among 
alien peoples ; and the furthest step on these lines 

[144] 



METHOD AND RESULTS 

is taken when backward groups are brought 
under subjection by others of superior culture, 
as when the inhabitants of Iberia and Gaul were 
conquered by the Romans, or those of Mexico 
and Peru by Spain. Now, without question, an 
influence is exerted in all these cases on the idea- 
system of the recipient group, but this influence 
is by no means subversive of the idea-system af- 
fected. The new elements enter into the old sys- 
tem, modifying and being in turn modified by it, 
but do not effect its disintegration ; for, although 
any idea-system is a co-ordinated whole, separate 
new ideas may be taken over gradually to. an 
almost unlimited extent without affecting its 
predominant characteristics. This is notably the 
case where material objects or mechanical inven- 
tions are concerned, and the introduction of the 
horse and gun no more revolutionized the Amer- 
ican Indian's ways of thinking and acting than 
the telephone and aeroplane have upset our own 
conventionalized philosophy of life. A small 
body of immigrants may thus have an influence 
on the recipient group out of all proportion to 
their number, and it would be wholly impossible 
to understand the present condition of mankind 

[ us ] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

without taking the process of modification by 
contact into consideration. 

Nevertheless, when we turn to apply this pro- 
cess to the special problem of advancement- 
exemplified concretely in the European civiliza- 
tion of the present — it affords no direct explana- 
tory assistance. The reason is not far to seek, for 
while the contact process may tend, theoreti- 
cally, to bring all groups to the level of the high- 
est, it cannot serve to place any one group far in 
advance of the rest. Even supposing that the in- 
truding few, like the British in India, could raise 
the recipient many to a level with themselves 
(which may be regarded as an impossibility), 
this would not raise the status of the more ad- 
vanced group to which the intruders belong. We 
may say, therefore, that, in the endeavor to dis- 
cover how men everywhere have come to be as 
they are today, we must take into account the 
operation of a whole series of modifying pro- 
cesses, but we must admit further that these 
processes do not provide an explanation of the 
emergence of higher idea-systems. 

6. In approaching the problem of "change," it 
is above all things important that the investigator 
should be on his guard against the widely dis- 

[i 4 6] 



METHOD AND RESULTS 

seminated idea that human advancement has 
been due to human volition. We must beware of 
projecting ourselves and our modern intellectual 
interests into the past, and of imagining ourselves 
freed from the limitations under which, as we 
are quite ready to admit, our forefathers labored. 
The exercise of the will is not a recent acquire- 
ment, and today, as formerly, men are largely 
unconscious of the factors and processes that lie 
back of their most consciously determined reso- 
lutions. No theory of advancement that is based 
upon a supposed desire for betterment can be 
accepted as explanatory of how man has come 
to be as he is. Primitive man is not engaged in a 
struggle to emancipate himself from tradition; 
his efforts are not directed to the inauguration 
of change, but to the maintenance of the existing 
status — and it takes some radical upheaval to 
disturb his confidence in his own ways. Again, 
despite the prepossessions we unconsciously ab- 
sorb from an acquaintance with biological dis- 
cussions, we must avoid the assumption that 
human history displays any such regular and 
even process of change as is postulated in the 
Darwinian conception of "evolution." This sup- 
position leads inevitably to theories of slow un- 

[147] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

broken progress directed towards some determin- 
able end, but the evidence before us provides no 
basis for optimistic philosophizing. What we 
find actually throughout the course of history are 
the unmistakable results of constant processes 
manifested in fixity or persistence, tempered by 
other processes which gradually effect a modi- 
fication of this rigidity. In addition to these two 
sets of processes, however, there is abundant evi- 
dence of the fact that at different times and in 
different places certain events have led to signifi- 
cant changes in the groups affected, and that 
these changes stand in direct relation to the phe- 
nomenon of "advance." 

Investigation in different fields of the study of 
man has led many contemporary scholars — 
Petrie, Haddon, Rivers, Mackinder, Hogarth, 
Myres, Temple, Balfour, Smith, Hall, Jastrow, 
Sollas, to mention but a few — to observe that 
human advancement has followed upon the col- 
lision of different groups. Pieced together, the 
conclusions arrived at so far may be summarized 
in the statement that definite advance has taken 
place in the past when a group, forced from its 
habitat, ultimately by a change in climate, has 
been brought into collision with another differ- 

[i 4 8] 



METHOD AND RESULTS 

ing from it considerably in culture, and has re- 
mained upon the invaded territory. It is prob- 
able that this statement as a whole would not re- 
ceive unquestioned support from all those who 
have contributed to it in part; on the other hand, 
it is to be understood that the palaeontologist, 
geographer, anthropologist, archaeologist, or 
historian, as the case may be, has arrived at his 
conclusion, one may say, incidentally, and has 
not turned aside from the matter in hand to give 
this generalization independent consideration. 
Thus in any given instance it might be sufficient 
to say that "the dispossession by a newcomer of 
a race already in occupation of the soil has 
marked an upward step in the intellectual prog- 
ress of mankind," without pursuing the question 
further. As a consequence, the conclusions, even 
in the consolidated form here given, have not 
been carried to a point at which they might con- 
stitute an hypothesis explanatory of human ad- 
vancement. 

Indeed, it is only when we take a further step, 
and come to ask how conceivably usurpation of 
territory, or war, or admixture of peoples could 
affect intellectual advancement, that the under- 
lying problem is brought to light. It cannot well 

[i49] 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
be assumed that either the intermarriage of dif- 
ferent stocks or the struggle of battle will of itself 
bring about this result; and while it is said that 
"if you would change a man's opinions — trans- 
plant him," it does not follow that the change 
will be effected by the scenery. In short, the 
"change" that leads to advancement is mental. 
What, then, is of importance to notice is that 
when enforced migration is followed by collision, 
and this by the alien occupation of territory, 
there ensues as a result of the conflict the break- 
ing down or subversion of the established idea- 
systems of the groups involved in the struggle. 
The breakdown of the old and unquestioned sys- 
tem of ideas, though it may be felt as a public 
calamity and a personal loss, accomplishes the 
release of the individual mind from the set forms 
in which it has been drilled, and leaves men op- 
portunity to build up a system for themselves 
anew. This new idea-system will certainly con- 
tain old elements, but it will not be like the old, 
for the consolidated group, confronted with con- 
flicting bodies of knowledge, of observances, and 
of interpretations, will experience a critical 
awakening, and open wondering eyes upon a new 
world. Thus it is not the physical contact of men 

[150] 



METHOD AND RESULTS 

that is of supreme importance in human advance- 
ment, but the overthrow of the dominance of the 
traditional system in which the individuals com- 
posing the group have been trained, and which 
they have unconditionally accepted ; though ad- 
vancement seems rarely to have been possible, in 
the past, save when diverse groups have been set 
face to face in desperate struggle. 

Here, then, is a process which differs essentially 
from those previously described, for it is mani- 
fested only when some exterior disturbance or 
shock has, for the time being, weakened or over- 
come the influence or effect of the previously 
described processes ; when manifested, however, 
this process is the same in all cases. The hypothe- 
sis required may now be stated in the form that 
human advancement follows upon the mental 
release, of the members of a group or of a single 
individual, from the authority of an established 
system of ideas. This release has, in the past, been 
occasioned through the breaking down of pre- 
vious idea-systems by prolonged struggles be- 
tween opposing groups which have been brought 
into conflict as a result of the involuntary move- 
ments of peoples. What follows is the building 
up of a new idea-system, which is not a simple 



PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

cumulation of the knowledge previously ac- 
cepted, but the product of critical activity stirred 
by the perception of conflicting elements in the 
opposed idea-systems. 

7. The foregoing statement describes only in 
the most general terms the processes manifested 
in human history, and should be regarded merely 
as indicating directions in which investigation is 
required, for, as must be readily apparent, each 
of these sets of processes demands careful analy- 
sis. While this further analysis will not be con- 
tinued here, it is of some importance for us to 
arrive at an understanding as to the means which 
may be employed to verify the results obtained. 

It was stated earlier that any theory of how man 
has come to be as he is must be applicable to all 
human groups, "backward" as well as "ad- 
vanced"; must apply to the "backward" and 
"advanced" members of all groups, and hence 
must apply to the experience of the individual 
in the world today. It follows, therefore, that the 
processes indicated above are operative in our 
several individual lives, and, consequently, that 
the accuracy of the description may be tested by 
each investigator from the resources of his own 
personal observation. This, it must be clearly 

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METHOD AND RESULTS 

understood, does not mean that the individual is 
in a position to discover the processes manifested 
in history through introspection; it does mean, 
on the other hand, that, when results have been 
arrived at through the scientific study of the past, 
these results may be verified by reference to what 
is going on within and around us in the present. 
Thus, for example, if we consider the processes 
manifested in the fixity and persistence of idea- 
systems and ways of doing things, no one can be 
at a loss to discern the influence upon himself of 
the community in which he has grown up. From 
the beginning of life each one of us has been sub- 
jected to a discipline by those surrounding us 
which has determined and defined the avenues 
open to us for self-assertion or individual pur- 
posive activity. Again, each one of us is conscious 
of explicit restrictions in mental activity due to 
the particular selection of information and ideas 
which has been imparted to him at the outset of 
his career; the mental equipment which each one 
receives represents only a limited selection from 
the whole body of knowledge at the command of 
the group, and yet this selection, which under 
any other circumstances whatever would have 

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PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
been different, has been, and must remain, a 
dominant factor in our lives. 

Notwithstanding the tenacity with which we 
cling to mental habits once acquired, our ideas 
and ways of doing things are continually under- 
going modification, the actuality of which we 
may also verify by direct observation. Indeed, 
this process is particularly noticeable in ad- 
vanced groups, for in these, while group disci- 
pline is effective in maintaining a certain uni- 
formity in external behavior, the idea-systems of 
individuals vary within wide limits. This varia- 
bility is due, primarily, to the vast extent of the 
intellectual heritage of modern groups. Among 
ourselves, the body of knowledge immediately 
available is so great that its complete transmission 
to any individual is wholly unthinkable. It fol- 
lows that, in modern groups, the participation 
of the individual in the group idea-system is ir- 
regular and incomplete, and that under actual 
conditions each member of a given community 
acquires a personal system of ideas which differs 
considerably from that of his fellows, though 
drawn from the same source. As a consequence, 
the contact of individuals, being accompanied by 
the interchange of differing personal views, leads 

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METHOD AND RESULTS 

to a continual criticism and modification of our 
outlook upon the world; and, indeed, the atti- 
tude which we regard as specifically character- 
istic of members of advanced groups is a wide 
tolerance of these differences in ideas, and a con- 
scious admission of the merely tentative validity 
of our most cherished convictions. 

Every individual, then, may verify from his 
own experience the actuality of the processes 
which are manifested, first, in the persistence, 
and, second, in the slow modification of ideas and 
ways of doing things, but the case is different 
when we come to consider the processes and fac- 
tors of change and advance. As we have seen, 
change ensues upon a condition of relative fixity 
through the interposition of shock or disturbance 
induced by some exterior incident. Now, while, 
historically, advancement has been dependent 
upon the collision of groups, the resultant re- 
sponse has taken place in the minds of individ- 
uals, and so we are led to see that all transitional 
eras are alike in being periods of individual men- 
tal awakening, and of the release or emancipa- 
tion of individual initiative in thought and ac- 
tion. This applies equally whether we consider 
the past or the present, and, consequently, since 

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PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

the antecedents of advance are realized only in 
exceptional cases, we are forced to rely, for the 
verification we are now discussing, upon the tes- 
timony of exceptional individuals. That the his- 
torical process of individualization of thought is 
also the form through which advancement pro- 
ceeds today would best be shown by an extended 
examination of the biographies of notable men, 
but for the present we may accept the evidence 
adduced by psychologists and other investigators 
who have already called attention to the facts. 

In reality, there is nothing abstruse about the 
processes involved, for, primarily, as S. A. Cook 
has pointed out, we hold ideas simply because 
nothing has occurred to disturb them ; the fact is, 
in the words of Sir Oliver Lodge, that unless we 
encounter flaw or jar or change, nothing in us 
responds. So Bateson, seeking for an alternative 
to the method of Darwin, has proposed to "con- 
sider how far we can get by the process of re- 
moval of what we may call 'epistatic' factors, in 
other words those that control, mask, or suppress 
underlying powers and faculties." "I have con- 
fidence," he says in the course of this inquiry, 
"that the artistic gifts of mankind will prove to 
be due not to something added to the make-up of 

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METHOD AND RESULTS 
an ordinary man, but to the absence of factors 
which in the ordinary person inhibit the devel- 
opment of those gifts. They are almost beyond 
doubt to be looked upon as releases of powers 
normally suppressed." It is, however, in the later 
writings of William James that the subject re- 
ceives fullest consideration. Reviewing Herbert 
Spencer's Autobiography, he says, "Mr. Spencer 
himself is a great social force. The effects he 
exerts are of the nature of releases — his words 
pull triggers in certain kinds of brain." "In 
biology, psychology, and sociology," he con- 
tinues, "the forces concerned are almost exclu- 
sively forces of release." Furthermore, at this 
point one might well incorporate entire his re- 
markable essay on "The Energies of Men." In 
this he points out that "as a rule men habitually 
use only a small part of the powers which they 
actually possess and which they might use under 
appropriate conditions." "We are all," he says, 
"to some degree oppressed, unfree. We don't 
come to our own. It is there, but we don't get at 
it." The inhibition is due to the influence of con- 
vention, and he remarks that "an intellect thus 
tied down by literality and decorum makes on 
one the same sort of impression that an able- 

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PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

bodied man would who should habituate himself 
to do his work with only one of his fingers, lock- 
ing up the rest of his organism and leaving it 
unused." To what, then, he asks, do men owe 
their escape? and to what are improvements due, 
when they occur? In general terms, he says, the 
answer is plain : "Excitements, ideas, and efforts 
are what carry us over the dam." Ideas, in par- 
ticular, he regards as notable stimuli for unlock- 
ing what would otherwise be unused reservoirs 
of individual initiative and energy. This effec- 
tiveness he ascribes to the fact, first, that ideas 
contradict other ideas and thus arouse critical 
activity, and, second, that the new ideas which 
emerge as a result of this conflict unify us on a 
new plane and bring to us a significant enlarge- 
ment of individual power. Thus, in complete un- 
consciousness of the historical aspect of the sub- 
ject, James has described, from the point of view 
of the individual, what proves to be the essential 
element in the process through which human 
advancement has everywhere been made. 

8. We are now in a position to recognize the 
nature of the processes which have been opera- 
tive throughout human history, and to see how 
the actuality of these may be verified under pres- 

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METHOD AND RESULTS 
ent conditions. It must be repeated, however, 
that the statement here given is of the most gen- 
eral character and that continued research, en- 
tailing the minute examination and comparison 
of eras of transition, will be required to deter- 
mine fully and completely the elements of His- 
tory. Nevertheless, it may be urged that the mode 
of procedure here outlined brings into one con- 
nected view bodies of fact which have hitherto 
remained disparate and intractable, and that it 
opens up new problems and new fields of inquiry 
for historical investigation. Indeed, even to the 
student who regards the construction of narra- 
tives as the sole and proper aim of History, it 
offers new phases of interest, suggests new aspects 
of human activities, and provides a basis for the 
treatment of "general" history which renders 
him independent of time-honored philosophies. 
Nor is it to be overlooked, in considering the 
possibilities of this approach to the study of how 
man has come to be as he is, that, in addition to 
the stimulus it may afford to History, it makes 
feasible a mutual understanding and co-opera- 
tion between the different specialties of human- 
istic study. It must be admitted, I think, that the 
manner in w T hich studies like anthropology, his- 

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PROCESSES OF HISTORY 

tory, and geography, art, literature, and religion, 
philology, politics, and economics have been car- 
ried on in separate compartments has not been 
conducive in the highest degree to the advance- 
ment of knowledge. These subjects are not inde- 
pendent sciences ; they are aspects of the study 
of man which have been pursued in comparative 
isolation because of the circumstances of their 
several origins, and because they have not been 
brought into relation by a common methodology. 
On the other hand, when it is seen that the under- 
taking in which they are one and all engaged is 
the attempt to determine how the idea-systems 
of men have come to be as we find them today, 
the fundamental unity of these studies at once 
becomes apparent; and, indeed, as an illustration 
of this unity, one might well agree with the sen- 
timent (though certainly not with the wording) 
of Ostwald's statement that the history of the 
sciences furnishes the best and most trustworthy 
materials for the study of the laws that govern 
the development of humanity. 

Finally, the method herein described brings the 
study of History into direct relation with the 
problems of life. I have indicated that, through- 
out the past, human advancement has, to a 
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METHOD AND RESULTS 

marked degree, been dependent upon war. 
From this circumstance, many investigators have 
inferred that war is, in itself, a blessing — how- 
ever greatly disguised. We may see, however, 
that this judgment is based upon observations 
which have not been pressed far enough to elicit 
a scientific explanation. War has been, times 
without number, the antecedent of advance, but 
in other cases, such as the introduction of Bud- 
dhism into China, the same result has followed 
upon the acceptance of new ideas without the 
introductory formality of bitter strife. As long, 
indeed, as we continue to hold tenaciously to cus- 
tomary ideas and ways of doing things, so long 
must we live in anticipation of the conflict which 
this persistence must inevitably induce. 

It requires no lengthy exposition to demonstrate 
that the ideas which lead to strife, civil or inter- 
national, are not the products of the highest 
knowledge available, are not the verified results 
of scientific inquiry, but are "opinions" about 
matters which, at the moment, we do not fully 
understand. Among modern peoples, the most 
important of these opinions are concerned with 
the ordering of human affairs; and in this area 
all our "settlements" of the problems which con- 
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PROCESSES OF HISTORY 
front us must continue to be temporary and un- 
certain compromises until we shall have come to 
apply the method of science in their solution. 
Science is not a body of beliefs and opinions, but 
is a way or method of dealing with problems. It 
has been said by a notable contemporary that 
men begin the search for truth with fancy, after 
that they argue, and at length they try to find out. 
Scientific method is the term we use for the or- 
derly and systematic effort to find out. Hitherto, 
the most serious affairs of men have been decided 
upon the basis of argumentation, carried, not in- 
frequently, to the utmost limits of destruction 
and death. It should be possible to apply in this 
domain the method of finding out, and it has 
been my hope to contribute, in however tentative 
a manner, to this end. 



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